


The Lying Detective (alternative)

by 221b_hound



Series: The Pure and Simple Truth [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Grieving John, Grieving Sherlock, Hospitalization, M/M, Major Character Injury, Multi, Past Drug Use, Polyamory, Story: The Adventure of the Dying Detective, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-08 01:23:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11071113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: Mary was the bridge between them. Without her, is there still an 'us'? Perhaps, if John and Sherlock can survive the guilt, the grief, the game.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I'll add tags of characters etc as i go.

It was raining outside. It always seemed that way, when he was here. That it was raining. He was made of stone and all the grief was outside his body. Easier that way.

“Tell me about your morning,” said Ella Thompson, her tone warm, not without sympathy, but not too warm, too sympathetic. John liked that about her. “Start from the beginning.”

“I woke up,” said John. He sat in his usual chair in the usual room saying the usual things, which was not much at all.

“How did you sleep?” asked Ella.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t.”

“You just said you woke up.”

“I stopped lying down.”

“Alone?”

“Of course alone.”

“What about Rosie?”

“She’s with friends. For a while. I can’t always cope.  Last night wasn’t good.”

“That’s understandable, John.”

“Is it? Why? Why does everything have to be understandable? Why can’t some things be unacceptable, and we say that? We just say that. I'm letting my daughter down.”

“I only meant, it’s okay. It’s human.”

John sucked in air through his teeth and huffed it out, angry. “It’s not okay. Nothing’s okay.”

“Sherlock isn’t with you?”

“I haven’t seen him. Since the funeral.”

“You told me that the three of you were very close.”

“We. Yes. Were.”

“The Three Muskateers, you said once.”

John barked a harsh laugh. “Only if they were shagging.” Then he blinked and stared at Ella. Ella, professional as ever, just waited patiently for him to continue. “Did you guess that about us? That the three of us were. Shagging.”

"You've always spoken very lovingly of both Mary and Sherlock," she admitted, "I wondered if there was more to your friendship than you were saying.”

“Ha.” Humourless.

“Was it ... just shagging?”

John chewed at his lip. Looked out the window. Was it always raining when he came here, or did it just feel like that?

He looked back at his therapist, waiting patiently. Tried to find any sign of her finding this admission disgusting or immoral or risible, somehow. Funny. These three people in love. Some kind of sex cliche.

“It wasn’t just shagging,” he said. “We were. Together. The three of us. Poly. You know? Kept two houses, but we all lived in both of them. Mary and me at Baker Street, with Rosiet too, after she was born. Kept a cot there for her. Sherlock came to our flat other times. The three of us. The four of us. We’re. Were. We were. Family.”

“Is it… unacceptable, that Sherlock should be with you now that Mary has died? Is that why you haven’t seen him?”

“What? No. No, that’s not. It’s. That’s not why. It’s just. He’s struggling. Mrs Hudson says. And he’s. He won’t. Can't. She says he. Won't leave the flat. He hasn’t come to me. I haven’t gone to him. It’s just. What it is.”

“What is it, John?”

“Suffocating. Airless. There's no air. It's. Vacuum. Nothing. All of this. This. How I. Feel. I can’t breathe. I’m not… not always.” He flexed a bandaged hand. “I can’t always cope with Rosie. I don’t cope with my own. With my own. I’m angry. I’m. I’m. I’m not.”

“Who are you angry with?”

“With Mycroft. With that bitch Norbury. With Ajay. With myself. With. With Mary. With everybody. I can’t. I can hardly manage myself. I haven’t got… there’s not enough of me left to deal with Sherlock too. With his. How he feels. I don’t know how to. Deal. With my own.”

“Are you angry with Sherlock?”

“I. I don’t know.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.” Unequivocal, that, but then, “But… Mary brought us together. She was. She was the bridge. She made us _us_. I don’t know if. If there’s an us without her.”

He pulled in a hard breath and pressed a closed fist against the bridge of his nose.

“She wrote me a letter,” he said softly. “After we were married, before we were…. Musketeers.”

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know. I can’t. Read it. It’s. Greg stuck it on the fridge. It’s still there.”

Ella asked him to tell her about the letter: how he received it, why he hadn’t read it. He told her about her old job, the Black Box. That there was a mission, but not who or why. Then fell silent.

“I hear her, you know,” he said after a moment, “Around the flat. Other rooms that I’m not in. I go looking for her sometimes. I. Talk. Talk to her. Sometimes.”

John stared at his hand on the armrest. It was shaking. Back again. Like the limp.

“I’m not crazy,” he said.

“It’s a stress reaction,” said Ella, “Grief, so soon after fatherhood. Responsibility and loss. Do you have anyone to talk with?”

“Apart from Mary?” A harsh laugh, self-deprecating, full of despair.

“Yes.”

“They leave me,” John said. “They all leave me.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry tries to be a good friend, a good sister, a good aunt. Everyone is suffering. Everything's a mess. And now there's Culverton Smith.

Mycroft heard the door to his private room creak open and tried to summon the motivation to open his eyes. See who it was.

His eyes remained closed. He just couldn’t be bothered looking.

The opening of the door was furtive, though. Not his parents then. Not the very absent Sherlock. Not Anthea, who’d never been furtive in her life. An assassin. How tiresome.

He opened his eyes a crack, because it was less work than trying to think it through.

Beaming sheepishly down at him was Harry Watson.

“Go away,” he groaned, closing his eyes, rolling his head away. Well. It wasn’t as though he could walk away from her, was it.

“You look awful,” she said.

He tried to blank her out.

“I bet it’s the hospital food,” she said, “Though that’s probably rude. I used to nick stuff off John’s plate when he was recovering from being shot. Not too bad. But John said ‘haven’t I suffered enough?’” She laughed. “He always did hide behind being a sarky bastard. Well. He used to. Not helping him much right now.”

She inhaled on the solemn, sad thought and then made her expression bright again. “Anyway, I thought I’d come and see if I could make things slightly less miserable for you.”

“Go. Away.”

“All right. But a fag first, yeah?”

He listened to her walk to the side of the bed. Heard her take something from her pocket. Open a cigarette packet and extract a cigarette. He heard the flick of the lighter, the faint crackle of the tobacco as it burned, as she sucked on the filter. He smelled the smoke then too.

“Here  you go, quick, before the nurses come.”

He opened his eyes to find her offering her the cigarette she had lit. Abhorrent, strangely intimate, to offer him a cigarette that had been in her own lips.

He parted his own, and she placed the cigarette there. He sucked on it. Raised a hand, the arm trailing tubes, to take it out and blow the smoke slowly out. Closed his eyes again to savour it, and took another drag.

“It’s a fuck of a thing,” said Harry, “But I think it’s taking sibling rivalry a bit too far.”

Mycroft looked at her, eyebrow raised, as he inhaled a third lungful of blessed tobacco.

“I’ve seen those photos of Captain Cutecheeks dressed up as a pirate. All those kids’ books with his name in them. Your mum told me what a thing he had about pirates. But you get the peg leg. He’ll be furious about you one-upping him on that.”

Mycroft began to laugh, which made him cough, but he recovered quickly and sprawled on his pillow again, huffing a quiet laugh. The cigarette dangled from his fingers. “Not an angle I’d considered,” he said. “Good to find an upside.”

“You should get one of those wooden legs with a gun built into it. You’ll be all the rage at spy school.”

“The temptation to use it during debriefings would be too great, I’m afraid. Perhaps I’ll just fill it with rum. That would be of more use, especially when the Home Secretary starts on her pet themes.”

Harry sighed.  “Never was a rum drinker, but I suppose it suits the peg leg. I’d have taken you for a whisky drinker, myself.”

“I do have a remarkably good 15 year old Bruichladdich at home.”

“I never walked past a Glenfiddich myself, back in the day.”

“Walking past now?”

“Yeah, fuckit. I suppose I should give up smoking too, but then I’d lose the will to live completely. Speaking of which…”

He handed her the cigarette and she pulled on it. “Fuck, that’s good.” She handed it back to him, and while he took another drag on it, she asked, “Has Captain Cutecheeks been by?”

He blew smoke into the air. “No. I hardly expect him to come.”

“He hasn’t been to see John either,” said Harry.

The cigarette burned down.  Harry took it from him, stubbed it out on her shoe and hid the evidence in her pocket, wrapped in tissues. From another pocket she pulled out a small air freshener and energetically squirted puffs of it all round the bed and towards the ceiling fan before putting it away again.

“You surely don’t think that disguises the scent of tobacco,” asked Mycroft drily.

“Course not. Spirit of Citrus makes its own declaration about what it’s covering up. It’s just plausible deniability, since that hatchet faced nurse chucked me out last time for sneaking you a fag. I had to tiptoe in as it was.”

“You are stealthier than you look, then.”

“Pffff. I spent my formative years avoiding clips round the ear from my old man. I’m a world class sneak.” She wafted her hand through the air, spreading citrus and smoke more thinly around the room. Mid-waft, she grimaced at his raised eyebrow.

“I’d be furious with your brother for not going to see mine, if I wasn’t certain he’s just as fucked up as Johnnie,” she said. ‘Molly says he’s kind of living in a nest he’s made at the end of the sofa. I don’t think I was meant to tell you that. Your mum thinks you’ve got enough to worry about.”

“I suspected he’d do as much. He… falls hard.”

“Yeah. Him and Johnnie both.  She was something else, Mary.” Harry’s chin quivered and she swallowed hard. “I liked having a sister, for a while.” She dashed at her eyes with the back of her hand, sniffed and adopted a fierce look.

Mycroft closed his eyes again. “It’s my fault.”

Harry’s reply was instant. “Fuck _that_ noise.”

“I should have seen it coming.”

“That’s Sherlock’s job, isn’t it? Not that I think it’s his fault either. You’re not bloody God.”

“Norbury worked for me. I should have found her out in the previous inquiry. I certainly should have handled the confrontation differently. At least seen that she was armed. I am meant to be the smart one.”

“You smoke, you happily drop a hundred quid on a bottle of scotch and you’re planning to fill your peg leg with rum. I’d adjust your claims, if I were you.”

“He needs distraction,” said Mycroft.

“He fucking does,” said Harry, “He won’t sleep. I think he’s scared if he drops off, Rosie’ll be missing when he wakes up. He catches a few winks if I’m there, or Molly and Greg.”

“I meant Sherlock.”

Harry sighed. “How the fuck do we do that?”

“I’ve texted him,” admitted Mycroft. “He hasn’t answered.”

“Molly says he’s not answering anybody’s texts or calls. He just shouts at the phone.”

“He might respond if you go. A link with John and Rosie.”

“And say what?”

“Tell him something strange is going on at this hospital.”

“Like he’ll believe that.”

“He will.”

“Why?”

“Because there is something strange going on at this hospital. In particular, with Culverton Smith.”

“Fuck, really? Everyone thinks he’s such a good guy.”

“You don’t?”

“Little fucker reminds me of a creepy social worker we had at Downview. Liked to look like he was doing good, but the way he used to smile when anyone got in trouble. I’m pretty sure he set a couple of the girls up. He was in love with the sound of his own voice, giving advice and shit. Tried it on me once but I wasn’t any fun for him. I don’t cry. He liked other people’s suffering. So what’s Culverton Smith getting up to?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Mycroft, “But I suspect it’s murder.”

Instead of being impressed, Harry rolled her eyes. “Melodramatic much? Oh, don’t pull that face. You’re not like that brother of yours, prancing about and then looking sideways at Johnnie to see if he’s got a stiffy yet.” She laughed at the horrified look on Mycroft’s face. “But seriously. Smith’s a creeper, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s up to creeper shit.”

She pulled out another cigarette and made to light it, then tiptoed to the door to check the corridor. She pulled her head in suddenly, alarmed, and flicked off the lighter.

“Fuck. Someone’s coming this way. I can’t get out without Nurse Hatchet seeing me.” Harry looked around, decided she’d never get out of the room in time, and darted for the private bathroom instead. “When Nurse Hatchet asks who gave you a fag, don’t say it was me or you’ll never get another.”

Harry slipped into the bathroom, dropped to her knees so she couldn’t be seen through the narrow sliver of textured glass, and waited. She could hear a male voice murmuring, a truncated protest, and then an unpleasant, too jolly laugh. Frowning, Harry went to her hands and knees – a technique she perfected as a child, listening to when it was safe to come out of the bedroom or into the house – then she put her ear to the crack under the door and listened.

“…but I enjoyed it so much I had to try it again. And do you know what? It never gets old.”

“What… are you…?”

“Don’t work yourself up. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Not right now. You won’t even remember this conversation, but I’ll always treasure that look on your face.”

“I’ll…”

“No you won’t. Tut, tut, let me take that. Who would you be calling? Oh. Your infamous brother. I don’t think so.  And heeeeere we go. The midazolam is taking effect now. You’ll be dizzy a while, but you won’t remember a thing. It’s a kindness, isn’t it?”

Harry heard Mycroft’s groaning ‘no’ and then heavy breathing and then nothing but a dozen light footsteps as the visitor left.

She stood up and quietly exited the bathroom. A swift look at the hospital bed – Mycroft seemed asleep.

Harry stood by the door to the private room and peered out. At the end of the corridor, being lovingly sent on his way by the admiring nursing staff, was that creeper Smith.

Harry tiptoed back to Mycroft. He was fast asleep, but even to her untrained eye it seemed odd, his breathing a bit laboured.

Harry pushed the button for the nurse and prepared for Nurse Hatchet to lay into her for smoking in Mr Holmes’s room. Whatever. As long as she checked to make sure Mr Holmes hadn’t been poisoned.

*

Harry pushed open the door to the Baker Street flat, nose wrinkling in distaste. Mrs Hudson’s word of caution wasn’t wrong. Captain Cutecheeks was in a state.

“Oi,” she said, stepping inside and closing the door. “Holmes.”

The living room was strewn with detritus. Papers and photographs spilling out of coloured folders, notebooks, scraps of cloth, glass slides held together in clips to preserve the material trapped between them. A tatty shoe, a piece of pottery, a yellow mask.

Harry picked her way through the mess towards the man huddled at the end of the sofa, swiping images back and forth on his phone. She pushed a pile of papers off one end of the coffee table onto the floor and pushed two trays of untouched tea and sandwiches into the cleared space so she could sit on the end nearest him.

“Oi, Holmes,” she repeated.

“Go away.”

“Not bloody likely. Did you get a text from your brother?”

“I don’t know.” Swipe, swipe. He stopped to read. Harry recognised her brother’s blog on Sherlock’s phone.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Reviewing the cases. I’m useless until I know it all. Can’t let it happen again.”

“Let what happen?”

“Mistakes.” He rooted through the papers for a photograph, peered at it and threw it aside. It was obvious he hadn’t shaved or washed in days; that he was living in this room, with a trail through the wreckage to the bathroom, but not the bedroom. Not upstairs, where John’s old room had become a spare room and temporary nursery for Rosie.

“You’re living like a pig,” she said.

Sherlock ignored her.

“You haven’t been to see John.”

“Can’t. I have to. Fix.” He waved his hand to indicate the ruin of all his case files spread all over the flat. “These. Mistakes.”

Harry prodded at the blankets curled around Sherlock’s feet with the tip of her boot. “You sleeping out here?”

He read. He swiped. He ignored her.

“I get it you know,” she said.

He scrabbled on the floor at his feet for a notebook and peered at the contents.

“After Clara and I split up, she left for a while, so I could pack everything up and get out before she got back. Two nights she was gone. Had the place to myself. I slept on the sofa. I couldn’t bear the bedroom. I could smell her perfume on the pillows. It was bloody awful.”

Sherlock paused and stared at her. “Clair de Lune,” he said suddenly. “She’s everywhere.”

“I know,” said Harry. “I’m sorry.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and looked away, and then suddenly back. “John. Is he…?”

“He’s fucking awful, of course, you arse.”

“Rosie?” His voice cracked on her name.

Harry noticed that among the sour smelling blankets and pillows in which he… nested was probably the only term… was Rosie’s little stuffed toy bee. Now that she was looking, Harry could see that striped jumper of John’s there too. God, this poor, fucked-in-the-head bastard. She’d lost a new sister. Sherlock Holmes looked like he was losing his mind.

“Is Rosie all right?” 

“What do you want me to say, Sherlock? Rosie cries, John doesn’t. Everything’s shit. I’m not here to make you feel better. I don’t know how.”

“What are you here for then?”

“I think that so-called philanthropist Culverton Smith’s done something absolutely vile. I don’t know what. But I think he’s threatening to do it to your brother.”

And she told him what had happened with Mycroft at the hospital. Sherlock, brow furrowed, thought about it. Fingers flying over the phone, he pulled up page after page of old news reports.

Afterwards, Sherlock scribbled hastily on a blank page in the notebook. He tore it out, folded it, shoved it into Harry’s hand.

“Make sure John gets this,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I made a promise. Go. I have to think about this.”

Harry put the note in her pocket and left.

She hoped this would work. Mycroft knew how to appeal to Sherlock’s smartarse brain, but Sherlock’s smartarse brain wasn’t exactly firing on all thrusters.

At John’s place, Harry let herself in. She’d liberated John’s keys a day after the funeral so she could get a set cut, in case he just didn’t answer the door again. That had only happened the once, and she’d found him cradling a sleeping Rosie, her empty bottle on the table next to them, John gazing at his daughter’s face like he was afraid if he moved she’d vanish.

“John?” Harry called out in a stage whisper.

“Here,” he said back, not a whisper but almost too quiet to hear. He was standing at the kitchen table, arms folded, looking at Rosie, asleep belly down on the floor among her soft toys.

“Hey.”

“Have you seen her bee? She cried all morning for it. I looked everywhere. Cried herself out in the end. I haven’t looked under the bed yet.” He didn’t move though. He stayed where he was, watching his baby girl sleep.

“John, this is from Sherlock.” Harry offered John the folded piece of paper. John stared at her hand.

“You’ve seen Sherlock?”

“Just come from him.”

“Is he… is he all right?”

“He’s a mess.”

John nodded.

“You should take Rosie to see him.”

John swallowed. He nodded again. He shook his head. “I. Know I should. I. Never get. Past the door.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know.”

“No. No, Johnnie, I don’t know.”

“I’m not fit to be a father,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You don’t  know, Harry. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I know you’re a fuckwit sometimes. But you’re a good Dad.”

He shook his head.

Harry took John’s hand and pressed Sherlock’s note into it. “Read it. He made me promise to give it to you.”

John stared at the note. He put it in his pocket. “Later.”

“John…”

“Will you stay? If she wakes up crying again… I can’t find her bee.”

Harry sighed. “I’ll stay,” she said. She left her brother watching Rosie, gaze full of piercing love and deep anguish, to put on the kettle.

“I saw Mycroft this morning,” she ventured.

“Fuck Mycroft,” said John, his voice quiet, steady, and swollen with loathing.

“Pretty fucked already, I’d say.”

“Good.”

Harry decided not to tell John about Culverton Smith yet.

Rosie stirred on her little mat. She started to cry. Harry left tea to steep and swooped in to pick up her niece.

“Hey, little flower,” said Harry. “Don’t cry. That’s it. Have a cuddle. Auntie Harry will change your nappy, and we’ll find that floppy bunny you like to chew on while your dad gets a bottle, eh? Eh little flower? Hmm?”

John moved around the kitchen on autopilot, like a ghost in his own life.

Rosie settled, sucking at Harry’s neck and cheek and offered pinkie knuckle, and whimpering her dissatisfaction.

“I know, Rosie,” said Harry softly, “It’s a fucking mess.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read about the properties of [Midazolam,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midazolam) the drug that makes you forget.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two haunted men stir, wake to happy memory of a sunny day, a dog, a family. But she's still gone and they still grieve, and one or both of them may be losing their grip.

Two men. Two homes. Each stirred from sluggishness that couldn’t be called sleep. Both had been haunted into almost-sleep by a ghost made of the scent of Clair de Lune. Both were haunted into dry-eyed wakefulness by that same ghost.

London gave them a sunny day; the sound of church bells carried lightly in the air, alongside the call of birds in the morning.

Two men. Two homes. The scent and the sunny day and the bells and birds reminded them both of the woman who had become a ghost; of a day some months past. When they were happy.

“I thought we weren’t going to take Rosie on cases,” John had said, even while strapping on the front carrier harness. Bright red, matching Mary’s coat. Sherlock’s choice. He’d done three days’ research on the best and safest design, and another day finding it in that colour.

Mary, holding Rosie on her hip, stopped blowing little kisses at her daughter to say, “It’s just a walk in the sun though, isn’t it?”

“I don’t expect trouble. Just data,” said Sherlock, “Hey boy? Hey Toby? Hey?” His tone was eager, boyish, as he vigorously patted the ears of the dog at his feet.

John and Mary exchanged indulgent looks.

“We should get Sherlock a dog,” said Mary to John, her tone half teasing, all fond, as she lifted Rosie into the carrier. “Loyal, handy on a case, he likes rubbing their ears…”

“I don’t need a dog, I’ve got John,” said Sherlock absently, still cheerfully fussing the animal, who wagged his tail in appreciation.

“Cheers,” said John, but he was laughing. “And it’s not my ears you rub anyway.”

Sherlock shot him an assessing look. “Your ears are very sensitive.”

John placed his hands over Rosie’s ears. “Not in front of the baby.”

“She doesn’t understand,” Sherlock protested, rising to kiss the top of Rosie’s head, then to kiss John’s ear.

“All Rosie knows is that her parents are content,” agreed Mary. Sherlock kissed her too. Mary, laughing, took John’s hand, kissed Sherlock on the cheek and said, “Do your stuff then, sunshine.”

In starts and stops, they trotted in Toby’s wake until they came to a butcher’s, and Toby lost the scent. Sherlock crouched to fuss Toby again, tell him he was a good boy, he’d done his best. There’d be a fresh clue and a resolution within the week, but for now the three adults took baby and dog on a refreshing walk through a park before returning Toby to his keeper.

That night, after Rosie was asleep, her three parents fell laughing into bed at the Watson’s flat, John mock-growling until his ears were rubbed, then other places.

“Good boy,” Sherlock told him breathlessly, hand patting through John’s hair while John _licked_.

Mary snugged up close, whispered warm in Sherlock’s ear, “You’re my good boy, too” and Sherlock wriggled head to foot in unexpected response to the playful praise.

“My good boys,” she said, giggling. John play-growled and teasing-nipped; Sherlock got on all fours and _presented_. Mary petted and praised and was nuzzled and praised in turn.

They slept afterwards in a puppy-pile, bare-skinned and close-wrapped and content.

In the haunted now, John rose from not-really-sleeping to go to Rosie, at the cot beside his bed. He lifted and cuddled her. Kissed her sleepy little face. Took her to the shelf that held a framed photograph of her smiling mother.

“Morning Mummy,” John said, directing Rosie towards the photo. “Mummy says good morning Rosie. Kiss good morning for our Rosie.” He kissed the soft crown of her head and took her to the nursery to change and dress her. He took her to the kitchen while he prepared a bottle for her. Sat on the couch and held her. He watched her feed with tender grief.

“Mummy loves you,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Rosie kicked her little feet. She pushed the bottle away from her mouth. Her blue eyes wide, she hiccupped. She waved her hands. Hiccupped again. John lifted her to his shoulder and rubbed her back.

He didn’t shower. He didn’t eat. He told her Mummy loved her and he didn’t cry.

In another part of the haunted now, Sherlock hunched on the floor at the end of the sofa. He stared into space, mind absorbing all he’d read and speculated about the problem Harry Watson had brought to him yesterday.

The decision was easy. He was already half way there. Hardly a stretch to go deeper.

He curled onto his side among the blankets, John’s jumper beneath his cheek, Rosie’s bee clutched in his fingers, held under his chin. Dry-eyed, he waited for the visitors he’d been expecting for days.

*

Mrs Hudson wrung her hands as she led Sherlock’s visitors up the stairs.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with him.”

Giles Holmes squeezed Leandra’s elbow and they braced themselves as they entered the flat.

At first they couldn’t see their son. The flat was in a terrible state. Several boxes had been overturned, their contents spilled across the floor. Papers were strewn from one end of it to the other, over furniture and the carpet. Every available surface in chaos.

“Go away.”

Dishevelled, unshaven, hollow eyed, he sat on the floor beyond the sofa, tucked in a nest of blankets between the sofa and the bookshelf, his back to the wall. His music stand had fallen over – sheet music was spread among the rest of the detritus. He was tapping a driving rhythm on his bent knees with nimble fingers.

“Sherlock, dear…” began Mrs Hudson

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Not hungry, Hudders. Can’t spare the energy for digestion. If I don’t work this out… Did you hear that? Upstairs? No. Probably just Mary settling Little Watson down. Or. No. well, obviously not. Memory plays tricks. The bastard.”

“Your parents are here, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock raised his head. “Oh.” His face spasmed in pain. “Oh. Hello.” He struggled to his feet.

Leandra Holmes, refusing to cry, strode through the sea of paper to her boy to pull him into her arms. He went limply, let himself be hugged without responding.

“Our deaths happen to other people,” he whispered, his head on her shoulder where she held him. “I’ve never thought about Euros that way. I never knew her. This. This feeling. This. Mycroft was right. Better to cut it off. I don’t know how.”

“Don’t say that.”

Giles stood at his wife’s side, his hand resting on his boy’s shoulder. Sherlock raised his haunted eyes to meet his father’s.

“It’s unbearable,” Sherlock whispered. “How did you survive?”

“WE had Mycroft. You were on the way. We found a way,” said Giles softly.

“Other people needed me,” said Leandra, rocking her boy in her arms, “People I loved. You have them too, Sherlock. People you love, who love you.”

Sherlock bent over, making himself small so he could press his face against her body and hold tight. Leandra stroked his tangled hair. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she said.

He shook his head and held harder still. Giles kissed his son’s hair, wrapped his arms around his family and held them both.

Molly’s voice preceded her into the room – “Sherlock, I got your text…” – but she fell silent as she entered. “Oh! Um.”

She began to back out into the hall again, but Sherlock pulled suddenly away from his parents. “Molly! Wait!” He whirled, nearly tripped on the blankets at his feet, steadied himself on the wall and staggered to the centre of the room. “Molly! Wait!”

Embarrassed, Molly halted, hovered at the door. Sherlock scooped up a shoebox and shoved it at her.

“Sherlock, what…?”

They fumbled the box between them and the lid flew off.

Inside the box was a handful of syringes. Three needles still in their packing. A clear plastic ziplocked bag with a teaspoon of white powder in one corner. Another containing three pink oval pills. Another with a glistening blue square, designed to dissolve on the back of the tongue.”

Her embarrassment became anger. “What is this?”

“Bloody woman won’t let up,” grumbled Sherlock, “At me all the time, in my ear. What would Rosie say? What about John? I want it but if I take it I’ll wake up and she’ll still be dead and she’ll still be whispering in my ear. Hardly see the point, can you? She told me to tell you to get rid of it, so get rid of it. Get that look off your face.”

He marched away from her, turned his back on Molly, on his parents, and found he was facing the rack of coats behind the door. The Belstaff. John’s black jacket. Mary’s red coat. He traced his fingers over the last two, then held his hand to his nose and inhaled. He turned away again, stalked into the living room, pushing past Mrs Hudson, oblivious to the looks of despairing compassion from the four witnesses.

He picked up something from John’s armchair, turned and flopping into it. The something turned out to be Rosie’s rattle. He shook it, staring at it speculatively.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mary,” he said, “I’m no use to them at all. I wasn’t any use to you, was I?”

“Sherlock?” asked Molly tentatively.

“I’m fine, Molly,” he said, “Nothing wrong up here.” He tapped his temple with the rattle. “I know she’s dead. I’m not crazy.”

“When did you last eat?” Molly asked gently.

Sherlock didn’t answer. Mrs Hudson said, “I’ve brought him food. He doesn’t touch it.”

“Sherlock darling,” said Leandra, “You need to…”

“Do you have any change in your pocket?” Sherlock asked abruptly, looking at his father.

Giles, bewildered, put his hand in his pocket to rattle the change thrown in with his keys. “A few pounds, I suppose.”

“Any silver?”

“About 80p.”

“Too little. That’s not good. Put them in your shoe, and the pound coins in your back pocket. You’ll be better balanced.

Molly crouched in front of him and took his hands. “Sherlock. You need some help.”

“Well, of course I do. I’m talking to ghosts.” He closed his eyes. “Have you ever wondered whether the whole of the ocean floor is covered in oysters? They’re so prolific. What would stop them overrunning the world?”

Molly tried to take his pulse. He snatched his hand away.

“If I’m to have a doctor, I’ll have one that’s competent, thank you.”

“Sherlock!” Mrs Hudson scolded, but her eyes were afraid.

“Dr Hooper ministers to the dead. I’m not ready to have my heart weighed. I’m not dead. Unless I am. Am I dead yet? Mummy?”

Leandra took his hand. “You’ll be fine, Sherlock. We’ll look after you.”

“They must have natural enemies that limit the increase of the creatures. Restaurants must do their part. Eat an oyster, save the world.”

“I’ll get you a proper doctor, Sherlock,” said Molly firmly.

“Get John. No. Wait. He can’t. He’s got Little Watson to look after. What does he need me for? Forget that. Who’s Mycroft’s doctor. Nothing but the best for my brother. That’s who I want.”

Sherlock lurched to his feet, dropped the rattle on John’s chair and strode for the front door. “Come on, then!” he demanded. He looked over his shoulder at nobody. “Yes, yes, see, I’m going! You were never this much of a nag when you were alive.”

Leandra broke the horrified tableau, striding after her son who was stomping down the stairs. Giles, frowning, exchanged a look with Molly and Mrs Hudson.

“That boy is up to something,” said Mrs Hudson.

“That doesn’t mean he’s well,” said Giles heavily. “He’s reminding me of Mycroft. After Euros died.”

“I’d better visit John,” concluded Molly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The silver and oyster references come from ACD's The Dying Detective.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a panic attack. Harry gives him tough love, big sister style. Harry and Molly take Rosie to the park while John tries to get his shit together. Grieving is hard and slow, and not only for the husbands.

Molly felt bad even as John bundled her in a panic out the front door, saying, “No. No. You’re wrong. He’s up to his usual stupidity. Playing games. He’s on a case. He’s fine.”

She shouldn’t have blurted out, “John, Sherlock’s in hospital, he needs you!” She should have been more considerate than to assume that it was John’s job to save Sherlock, even though surely it was John whom Sherlock needed. John was struggling as it was. That was abundantly clear the moment he had let her into the flat, unshaven, unwashed, mouth set in a grim line and his eyes, the bags under them looking bruised, glaring suspiciously at the sunshine beyond his front door.

“John, Sherlock’s in hospital, he needs you!” she’d blurted, and John had frozen and a look of terror had briefly flared in his eyes before fury took its place.

“Don’t,” he said. “No. Sherlock’s not. He’s fine. Not fine. But. He’s. No. No. You’re wrong. He’s up to his usual stupidity. Playing games. He’s on a case. He’s _fine_.”

And he’d practically pushed her out the door and slammed it shut on her.

Molly knocked on the door. “John?” she called. He didn’t reply. She knocked louder. Called his name again.

“Go away!”

She could hear Rosie start to cry.

“John!”

“Sherlock’s fine. He’s pulled this shit before.” He sounded less angry now, more panicked, and then enraged again, “Fuck off!”

Molly knocked and knocked. Called out. John didn’t reply again. Molly heard Rosie’s crying turn to distressed wailing, and she could hear John’s low voice sounding increasingly desperate. _Rosie, please Rosie, sssshhh, sssshhhh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Ssshhh. Please. Please. I can’t. Stop crying sweetheart. Sssh. I’m sorry._

“What the fuck?”

Molly stopped her own desperate crashing of knuckles on the door and turned to Harry Watson.

“Sherlock’s in hospital,” Molly blurted to Harry, “He’s having a breakdown.”

“Shit.” Harry bashed on the door. “Open the door, Johnnie, or I will fucking kick it down, and Rosie doesn’t need that. You don’t fucking need it. Open this fucking door right fucking now.”

The door opened. John, the ruins of John, opened the door. Stared at his sister with haggard blue eyes.

“Everyone leaves,” he gasped at her. “He’s not allowed to leave.”

“ _I_ didn’t leave,” Harry said firmly.

“You did. It was my fault but you still left.”

“I came back. So did Sherlock, so don’t start on that again. _You_ fucked off to the army but you came back. Not everyone goes, and maybe we don’t come back the same, but we’re here. Me and Molly and Rosie are fucking _here_ , Johnnie. Now, are you going to let me in or do I have to kick you in the shins?”

John stood aside. Harry bowled into the flat and Molly followed awkwardly behind.

Rosie was lying on a baby blanket on the floor, crying, her red face scrunched up, fat tears leaking down her cheeks and her nose glistening. Harry scooped her up and jounced her niece while John stood by the door, watching them.

“When did you last eat, Johnnie?” Harry demanded.

He blinked slowly, trying to remember. “I… had toast?”

“Shower?”

“I can’t leave Rosie alone.”

“Fine. Leave her with Molly and me. Go and shower. You stink.”

“Fuck you.” There was no venom in it. His voice shook. The words were full of the comfort of long use. Swearing at his sister, she at him, that was an old habit, full of rough affection.

“Johnnie. You’re a mess. Sherlock’s a mess. It’s all an awful fucking mess.”

“Sherlock’s not hurt,” said Molly quickly, “He just needs a rest. It would do him so much good to see you and Rosie. It would do you good too.”

“There you go, Johnnie. He needs a rest and to see you. You need a shower and to see him.”

John nodded and then shook his head, his face creasing in distress. “I can’t. I can’t take Rosie to the hospital. I want. I’ll. Go. I. But she shouldn’t.” He shuddered and tried again. “It’s getting so I can’t leave the flat. What if he’s. He’s. I can’t.”

Rosie’s sobs had quietened to little heartbreaking gasps, the tears and her gooey nose both wiped dry on her aunt’s T-shirt.

“Okay. One step at a time. Let Molly and me take Rosie for a little walk. Poor mite needs some fresh air.” Harry patted Rosie’s nappied bottom. “You’ve changed her, yeah?”

“Yes,” said John. “Changed. Fed. I bathed her last night.” He moved agitatedly on the spot. “I wouldn’t hurt her.” The simmering rage and the heart-stopping panic had both receded behind a solid wall of can’t-touch-me.

“Of course you wouldn’t hurt her. Let us take her out for some sun, yeah? While you shower.”

He nodded stiffly.

Harry passed Rosie into Molly’s arms. She gathered up the Backup Baby Bag – there was one at Baker Street as well, containing spare nappies, a change of clothes, a baby sling, a blanket,  baby wipes and half a dozen little thing that her parents had tucked inside, ready against any sudden need.

Harry took John by the shoulders and steered him to towards the bathroom. He went like a man shell-shocked, or a robot with his battery run down. She hugged him. He didn’t resist but he didn’t return the hug.

But when Harry joined Molly at the door and went to leave the flat with Rosie, he took a lurching stop towards them. He halted, just as suddenly, scowled in bemused shame and stared at his hands. He squared his shoulders. Adjusted his stance, weight on one foot then the other, then was still. He uncurled his clenched fists. Curled them again. His chin jerked up slightly, chewed at the inside of his lip. Became absolutely still.

“She. Rosie. Stays here. With people. She. Doesn’t go out. Without me.”

Despite his clenched fists, Harry could see the tremor in his left hand. She hadn’t seen that since after he’d left the army hospital. It had vanished after John had moved into Baker Street with Sherlock. It had returned briefly after Sherlock had jumped from the rooftop. Pretended to jump.

Fuck.

“Then it’s about time Rosie had a walk in the park, isn’t it? I’ll text you when we get there,” Harry promised him. “We’ll send you a park selfie too. We’ll send you six. When you call, we’ll come right back. But if I get here and you haven’t showered, I’m kicking your smelly arse. Okay?”

He didn’t reply. He grimaced, mouth twisted sourly.

“John, I won’t take Rosie out if you don’t want me too. But she needs some fresh air and you need to get your shit together. Molly and me’ll take good care of her. See, she’s getting a nice cuddle from her Auntie Molly, and I’ll rip the bollocks off anyone who looks at my niece funny. Just like I punched that twat Ricky in the eye that time he picked on you after school.”

His grimace became wry. “You were twelve.”

“Yeah. Imagine how my right hook has developed since then.”

John heaved a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Take her to the park. It’s good. I’m fine.”

“Course you are. Get in that shower now or so help me god, I will strip you naked myself and take to you with a nail brush.”

John quirked a small half-grin at that. “Fine.” Then he looked squarely at her. “Text me. The minute you’re there.”

“You got it. Text. Park selfies. The lot.”

She waited until her brother marched into the bathroom. Then Harry and Molly closed the door and took Rosie to the park.

*

Molly shook the bunny blanket out onto the grass under a tree while Harry kissed Rosie’s forehead and held up her phone.

“Smile, Cutie. Let’s help Daddy not have a panic attack.”

Rosie clung to Harry and stared unhappily at the camera. She hung onto Harry with one damp fist and sucked her thumb. Harry laid her cheek on the baby’s golden hair, fixed a reassuring smile on her face and took the picture.

_In the park with your girl. We’re  
all fine._

She sat on the edge of the blanket and placed Rosie in the centre. Rosie cried. Harry picked her up again and Rosie clung again.

“Poor little thing,” said Molly, unpacking the Backup Baby Bag until she found a toy. She waggled the silicone teether shaped like an octopus. Rosie grunted displeasure and hid her face against Harry’s chest.

“Yeah. Her mum’s dead and her dads are both madder than a box of frogs. It’s so fucked up. Oh. Sorry Rosie honey. Your auntie’s got a gutter mouth.” Harry kiss-kiss-kissed the top of Rosie’s head.

Molly discovered a jar of baby food and held it up. “I didn’t know Rosie was on solids yet.”

“I don’t think she is quite, but she’s old enough to be interested, so John shoved it in the bag a few weeks ago, just in case.” Harry peered at the jar. Mashed peach and banana. “Ha. The bastard. Last time I met Mary for lunch Rosie kept grabbing my banana. Mary thought it was fucking hilarious, watching her squish it between her fingers and all over my hair. And Mary was no goddamned help at all. She just took pictures of it for her mad husbands. Here. Take a picture for John.” Harry held the jar next to one cheek. Rosie reached for the jar right across Harry’s face.

Molly took the photo and sent it to John with the caption: _Rosie and Harry discussing lunch._

When Harry put Rosie between her legs on the blanket, Rosie held the little jar and gummed at the lid. Harry fished a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket, tapped one out, and stared at Rosie, who dropped the jar and decided to bang her tiny fist on Harry’s thigh. With a sigh, Harry replaced the cigarette and put the pack back in her pocket.

She continued to stare at Rosie.

“She’s got Mary’s eyes,” she said at last.

Molly, also watching Rosie, nodded. “And her eyebrows.”

“Fuck, yeah, you’re right. Shit.” Harry held out her finger. Rosie promptly seized it and shook Harry’s hand around like it was a toy before gnawing gummily at the knuckle. Molly hunted up the octopus and handed it over. Rosie grabbed it and started sucking on one of its legs.

“Fickle little thing,” Molly laughed. She waggled her fingers at Rosie and tickled her tummy. Rosie cackled.

“She laughs like Mary too,” Harry said, grinning, but suddenly the corners of her expressive mouth pulled down. She bit the inside of her lip to make it stop. It didn’t work, so she looked away.

“Harry?”

“Sorry. Fuck. I’m fine.”

She sensed Molly’s hand nearby and looked down to find an offering of tissues. She snatched at them crankily and shoved them against her eyes.

“Fuck this,” she muttered. “I’m the last one who should be crying.”

“Why shouldn’t you cry? It’s sad.”

“Mary wasn’t my wife. She wasn’t my mum.”

“You’re still allowed to be sad.”

Harry heaved a shuddering breath and blew her nose wetly. She wiped and shoved the tissues in her pocket with her cigarettes. “I had a sister for a less than a year. I really, really liked her. I liked having a sister.” She sniffed again, and accepted the next offered tissues more graciously. “After all that shit went down at Christmas, she used to call me. Just to talk. Not about what happened. Other stuff. Anything. Nobody ever just calls me, you know? Well, Giles and Leandra do now. They’re really sweet. I went last weekend to set up their Wi-Fi for them. Leandra’s teaching me how to bake, since Mary never got me past cupcakes, and I burned those. Giles says he’s going to teach me joinery. Hang on.”

Harry took another picture of Rosie gumming gamely at the octopus, then plucked a daisy from the grass, tucked it behind Rosie’s ear and took another.  Rosie grabbed the flower in her fist and gave it, mangled now, to Molly. Harry captured that moment too, and sent all three to her brother.

“Thank you, sweetie.” Molly booped Rosie on the nose and the little girl cackled again, before tipping over from where she sat against Harry’s thigh.

Molly sighed. “Giles and Mrs Hudson think John’s right. Sherlock’s on a case.”

Harry stroked the baby’s back. “Your other daddy really is on a case, babykins. Probably. Doesn’t mean he isn’t mad as a fucking balloon though.”

“You know about it?”

“Mycroft’s got the idea there’s shifty goings on at the hospital. He thinks it’ll help distract Sherlock to have something to occupy his mind.”

Molly made a rude noise.

“Yeah. It’s not his head that’s the problem, exactly. But Mycroft doesn't know the first fucking thing about engaging Sherlock’s feelings. I'm a first class fuckup and even I know that much. ”

“John’s not in on it? Oh. Obviously not.”

“Sherlock sent him a note. I haven’t been game to talk about it since. You see how he gets. It’s worse than when he got shot and they made him come home. Poor bastard. Our whole life is just one fucking thing after another. At least if he could make himself go to Sherlock, they could be hysterical and miserable together. John’s always a mess when he’s on his own. The only time he ever wasn't was after he moved in with Sherlock.”

“Sherlock too. A mess on his own, I mean. He was so much better after he met John.”

“Idiots,” said Harry. She lifted Rosie, who was starting to grizzle again, into her arms and pointed out a pair of dachshunds walking with their owner nearby. “See, Rosie? Puppies!”

Rosie sucked her fist and stared at the puppies, then leaned against Harry with a huge sigh.

Molly watched too. She also sighed. She said, “I never got to know Mary really well. I liked her though. She taught me something important.”

“What’s that?”

“You can love more than one person at a time. And it’s okay.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at Molly, then shrugged. “Okay.” She leaned towards Molly, Rosie in her arms, and took a threefie, the two women smiling everything’s-good-here smiles over the baby’s head. Harry sent it off to John.

“Everything’s good with you then?” Harry asked.

“I’m happy. Oh. I mean. Not about…”

“I know what you mean.”

“But yeah. For the first time in a long time, I’m really very all right.

“Good. You’re a nice person, Molly Hooper.”

Harry’s phone buzzed with a text from John.

_I’m ready. Kettle’s on._

He even sent a picture of himself, clean-shaven, damp hair combed back off his forehead.

“Do you want me to leave you to it?” Molly asked.

“Might be best. Big sister might have to kick some more little brother arse. Walk us back, though?”

“Of course.”

Molly held Rosie and started to point to and name plants while Harry repacked the Backup Baby Bag.

Harry sent two more pictures as they walked back to the flat: Rosie reaching out for the daisy that Molly was using to tickle her forehead. Then Molly’s face becoming a mask of horror as Rosie pulled a fierce little face while an unseemly noise emerged from her bottom.

“Oh god,” said Molly.

Harry sent the pictures to John and then, grinning evilly, rescued Molly by taking Rosie into her arms.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s good. I'm already covered in snot, and I’ve been shat on by babies before when I was little. John in a nappy was a terror. He was worse later when he could walk. He’d kick it off and go running around the house with a bare arse trying to climb all the furniture. I’m not sure he’s changed that much.” She said this just as they reached the flat.

Molly greeted John at the door with a strange look on her face  

"Sorry I gave you a fright," she said hurriedly and kissed him on the cheek. "But please. See him." Then she fled, still with that odd expression. 

"Rosie almost pooed on her," was all Harry said as she went inside.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry brings Rosie home and takes Big Sister care of John, with toast and jam and a bit of tough love. John finally reads Mary's letter. And then he gets a text from Sherlock.

John almost dived for his daughter as Harry came in the door. When Harry turned her back to him, refusing to pass Rosie over, he almost snarled at her, until she said, “She’s just filled her nappy, and you’ve just showered.” She marched towards the nursery and John, agitated, followed in her wake.

Rosie was getting fractious in her discomfort as Harry placed her on the change table.  The table was laid out in almost military exactness – wipes and cream, antibacterial pump pack, fresh  nappies,  a cup of plastic flowers to distract her with.

“You can put the kettle on,” bossed Harry.

John did not put the kettle on. He kissed Rosie’s fingers and twirled a plastic flower for her while Harry cleaned and changed her. Then he scooped his little girl into his arms while Harry washed her hands in the bathroom.

“Did you have a good walk with your aunties, baby girl?” he asked Rosie, willing his suddenly thrumming heart to steadiness. Rosie was fine. Of course she was fine. He had a phone full of pictures demonstrating just how fine she’d been, while her useless father had practised basic hygiene.

He sat at the kitchen table with her and played peekaboo. She giggled a few times, but then fell quiet and wanted nothing more than a cuddle. He snugged her close and rocked her in his arms. For a moment he could almost feel Mary’s arms around his shoulders, her voice in his ear, “you big softie” and Sherlock’s violin. Just at the edge of his hearing. The ghosts of the life he'd loved.

He closed his eyes.

“Feel better?” Harry asked, joining him in the kitchen. “You look slightly less like hell.”

“Better. Yeah.”

His sister bustled about the kitchen, reboiling the kettle and filling the cups he’d left out. He heard toast pop out of the toaster,  Harry fetching things from the cupboard and the fridge, then plonking a plate of toast with jam and butter cut into halves and a cup of tea in front of him.

“Eat. You look like a bag of bones, and you’ve already got a boyfriend for that job.”

He wanted to correct her. Sherlock’s slenderness, seen naked, was not skinniness. Not usually.

“Not hungry.”

“Tough titties. You look half zombie, and Rosie needs you. Eat.”

He ate. The toast was almost dripping in butter and piled high with jam. It was what she’d always made him, from when they were little and their mum was in hospital again and Dad buggered off to the pub, or later when they ran off and squatted. Toast was the only thing she knew how to make back then, but she made lots of it.

He choked down a slice, crumbs drifting onto Rosie. He thought Harry would try to take her, so he held more tightly to his daughter with one arm, and determinedly ate a second half slice. Despite himself, he felt better. He washed it down with tea. Ate another piece of toast.

Harry didn’t obviously watch him, though he knew she was doing so. He half resented it, but the other half felt if not safe then at least… not alone. His big sister had always done her best, in her own messed up way, to look out for him. Instead of hovering, though, Harry took up a basket of clean washing and began folding it. It was all Rosie’s clothing. He hadn’t washed for himself in over a week. Nearly two? Since before the funeral. Longer maybe. But Rosie had clean clothes. He kept the sink clean for Rosie. He’d tried so hard. And it was still shit.

“Get that look off your face.”

He cocked an eyebrow at Harry.

“That ‘I’m a no good dad’ look. Tell it to fuck off. We had a no good dad. You’re not him.”

He rocked Rosie in his arms and sipped his tea. “That’s a low bar, though.”

“Fuck that.”

“Yeah. Such a good father I have to call for help.”

“Now you’re being a fuckwit. Clara and me used to help her sister out. Well. Clara. At the end there I was usually too drunk. But. You know. When you’re doing it solo, it’s hard. Only idiots pretend they don’t need help with that shit. And yeah, you and I are world class morons in several major award categories, don’t think I don’t know it. But when you’re struggling, you call me, or Molly and Greg, or Mrs Hudson, and you make sure Rosie’s okay. That’s good parenting in my book. So fuck off with your I’m so pitiful song. I’m not buying it.”

John blinked at her, almost amused, almost angry. “Really?”

Harry sighed and sat next to him at the table. “Mary should be here, I know. It’s fucked that she’s not.”

John didn’t respond to that. Nothing to say really. _Yes, it’s fucked._ What could he possibly add to the obvious?

“What’s going on, Johnnie?” said Harry. “You need to see Sherlock. You need him. He needs you too.”

John swallowed convulsively. “It’s… complicated.”

“If it is, you’re the one complicating it. Everyone who ever saw you three together knew it _was_ the three of you. He’s in shreds too. You need each other, especially now.”

“He. I.” Rosie made a little sound and settled in his arms. “Him, me and Mary. It was him, me and _Mary_. I don’t know if. If. It’ll work. Just. Sherlock and me.”

“You are one stupendously dumb motherfucker, John Hamish Watson. Some days I’m ashamed to call you my brother.”

“Thanks, Harry. You’re always such a help.” Snide and weary, but more weary than snide.

Harry snorted rudely. “You and Sherlock were fucking _mad_ for each other long before Mary showed up. I read your blog, remember. You were practically begging to be shagged from day one, and then he went and pretended to jump off a roof for you, because your boyfriend is also a stupendously dumb motherfucker. And since you’re both really stupid at the best of times, and right now you’re both also so stupid with grief you can’t see straight, let me tell you something. Mary might have brought you back together out of that cock-up of a mission of Sherlock's, and the three of you loved each other like kids love Christmas. That was fucking awesome to see.” She bit her inner lip, and John recognised it as something he did himself, and realised she wanted to cry and wouldn’t. “The three of you were something really fucking good in this world. But before there were three of you, there was you and Sherlock Holmes. You both loved Mary. You didn’t need her to love each other. You dickhead.”

John huffed a pained laugh at her, knowing that he wanted to cry, and wouldn’t. “When did you get so bloody clever?” It was gently said, though, not a snark in sight.

“Someone tried to burn me to death and frame me for murder, and I finally grew the fuck up. It was a long time coming, Johnnie. Now it’s your turn.”

In his arms, Rosie sighed and shifted. She waved her arm and settled.

“You know her first word is going to be ‘fuck’, right?” said Harry. “Sorry in advance.”

“Here. Take her for a minute.”

Carefully, he transferred Rosie into Harry’s arms. Rosie snuffled but settled again. John rose and went to the refrigerator. He moved a magnet and retrieved a letter. He took it back to the table and sat before opening it with his thumb.

“It’s from Mary,” he half explained. “Maybe it’s time I read it.”

He was grateful Harry didn’t try to read it from where she sat, though she studied his face, which was almost as uncomfortable.

John unfolded the letter.

 _My darling John_ , it began.

_If you’re reading this, something has gone terribly wrong, and I’m dead. I’m so sorry._

_This letter is full of things I’ve kept secret from you that I never wanted to keep secret, and that I intended to tell you, and I’m frightened to think I never got the chance._

_I'll just say it, straight out, but please. Please read to the end. It's important._

_I was an agent with MI6. Mycroft can tell you all the details. I’m not a spy, but I was an analyst, and a handler of agents in the field. I’ve given Sherlock a letter too. I was Agra – his handler. I worked to keep him alive, finish that damned mission and bring him home to you.That was me and I'm so glad I did.  
_

_In the process I fell in love with you. Please believe that it wasn’t a game, a trick or anything but the fact that I met you and I fell completely, irrevocably in love. You were everything Sherlock ever said you were, and more. I love you. Don’t ever doubt that. I love you, John, and I planned to leave MI6 and be with you for the rest of my life, helping you and Sherlock have adventures. I wanted to live my whole life with you and him and our baby._

_I’m scared you’ll read this now and think you didn’t know me at all. But you did. You knew me. Everything that counted. And I want you to know that you made my life so very happy. I want so much to be a mother to our baby.  To raise our little Watson together. If something’s happened to me, you won’t have our little baby boy or girl either. And that breaks my heart. I’m so, so sorry._

_Whatever’s happened, John, I need you to know that I understand about you and Sherlock. I really do. I care deeply for him too, and I know that he loves you. I’ve recently realised that maybe he loves you in exactly the way you have always loved him, but he’s not allowed himself to realise or act on it._

_If you have this letter, I'm dead and I want you to promise me you'll go to Sherlock. You and Sherlock have always been stronger together than apart, even before I met you. You're stronger together now, too. Don't let that go._

_Don't shut yourself off, my love. It's what you did when you thought Sherlock was dead and it was killing you. Don't be alone. Don't let him be alone either. You’re both rubbish at that. He was a mess without you as well._

_It might be hard to think about now, but I know you love Sherlock. I know he loves you. Be with him.  However you want it to be, you love each other and you should work out how you want to be together. If you need my blessing, you have it, but my dear, wonderful John, you don't need it.  
_

_Be with Sherlock. Be happy. Please._

_With all my love, my dearest John, always._

_Your loving wife, and proud to have been_

_Mary Watson_

John folded the letter and placed it in its envelope. He put it on the table and laid his hands flat over the top of it.

He bit his inner lip.

He looked at Rosie, asleep in Harry’s arms. He carefully brushed toast crumbs from the soft little bee outfit Rosie wore. Organic cotton. Little golden bees all over it. Sherlock had bought it for her. Sherlock loved buying things for Rosie.

“Tell me about Sherlock,” he said. “The hospital. Is he all right?”

Harry frowned. She ran the tip of her finger over Rosie’s hand, which she’d closed into a fist in her sleep.

 _Another little fighting Watson_ , John thought, looking at Rosie's fist. That made him sad. He didn’t want Rosie to have to be a fighter like he and Harry had always had to be. He’d wanted her life to be good, filled with love.

“He’s not dying or anything,” said Harry eventually, “But he’s a godawful mess.”

“Is it a case?”

“Yeah. I think. Sort of. Mycroft told him about something weird happening at the hospital. But seriously, John. I think he’s only half pretending to be having a breakdown. I know you think you can’t cope with how he’s not coping either, but maybe you can look after each other. Or maybe you can just go and not cope together.  Hang on to each other and scream at the universe. Like we did on Hampstead Heath that night. Two kids not coping, but _together_.”

Before he could reply, his phone pinged with a text message. Not just any ping. _Ha!_ came the sound. In Sherlock’s voice. A message alert he hadn’t heard for weeks. Mary had made the recording and assigned it to Sherlock’s number. _Ha!_ The sound of Sherlock triumphantly making a discovery.

John pulled out his phone to see the text message:

 _St Marcus Hospital. Come  
at once if convenient, etc. Bring   
Bart the Beefeater._ _SH_

John stared at the text, then rose abruptly. He disappeared into the nursery, returning with a teddy bear dressed as a Tower Beefeater. A souvenir from a case. Rosie had taken a shine to the bear, so Sherlock had given it up from his trophy box and let her keep it.

“You’ll look after Rosie?” he asked Harry.

“Yeah. Go on. Find out what the hell your boy’s up to.”

John looked for his black coat, couldn’t find it, dragged on another and, with the bear under his arm, ran out to find a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rosie's bee outfit](https://www.burtsbeesbaby.com/Bee-Essentials-Footie-Coverall-and-Knot-Top-Hat-Set/LY11165-CLD-6M.html)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> St Marcus's Hospital. Sherlock won't see John. John speaks to Mycroft instead, only for them to find a secret message Mycroft has left for himself. John runs. He runs. He runs. And Sherlock? Sherlock wants desperately to live, but Culverton Smith has other plans.

John stopped at the hospital shop first for fresh batteries, which he put into the bear. He checked the text Molly had sent in reply to his query and made his way to the wing where Sherlock had been placed.

Sherlock wasn’t there.

His parents were, however, Giles carrying a plastic bag containing Sherlock’s clothes.

“He’s fine,” Leandra said hurriedly as the colour drained from his face, “They’re just moving him to a premium room in the Culverton Smith Ward.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly, unlocking his chest, making himself breathe.

He let her hug him. “I’m so sorry, John. We miss Mary terribly. If you’d like a break from the city, you’re so very welcome to visit us with Rosie and Sherlock, whenever you like.”

John nodded stiffly and cleared his throat.

Giles hefted the plastic bag. John could see Sherlock’s rumpled suit, a stained shirt. The Belstaff at the bottom of the bag, taking up most of the room.

“I’m just taking these along to Sherlock’s room no,” said Giles. “Why don’t you come with me?”

John, holding the bear under one arm, followed Leandra and Giles down the corridor, to a bright walkway, its curved windows arched overhead, which led to the Culverton Smith wing.

(John tried not to flinch at the arched windows overhead; the shadow of a bird passing overhead made his heart race. It was like the aquarium. Waterless. Sharkless. But the sunlight was heavy and opaque to him, the menace of it something he could taste. His hand tremored and he held hard to the bear. _He asked for Bart specifically. He’s up to something. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine._ )

It was a relief to enter the ward, named for the philanthropist who had invested so much time and money into St Marcus’s Hospital. It was said that Smith had even had a hand in the design, wanting to make his mark. “Put a little bit of myself into this great work,” he said in innumerable interviews.

John had never much liked that man. Laughed too much. All that bonhomie. He didn’t trust it.

He had to stop distracting himself with thoughts of Culverton Smith, though, when Giles knocked on a door labelled ‘CS 01’ and softly entered.

“Sherlock? I’ve brought your clothes,” he said. “We’ll bring something clean for you tomorrow.”

Around Giles’s arm, John could see Sherlock turn his head towards the door, hardly interested.

Sherlock looked… bad. His skin too pale, almost as delicate as tissue paper, but bruised looking under the eyes, and from the dark stubble. He was haggard; curls a tangled fright. He winced as though the light was too bright.

“I brought you a visitor,” said Giles.

Sherlock’s lacklustre eyes met John’s, and Sherlock winced. “I don’t want him here.”

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock closed his eyes tight and turned his face away. “No. If I’m to have a doctor, make it a specialist.”

John stared at the back of Sherlock’s head. He swallowed hard.

“I brought the bear,” he said.

Sherlock held his arm out behind him, surely uncomfortable with how it twisted his shoulder and spine. He flexed his fingers impatiently.

John took hesitant steps to the bed. He placed the bear in Sherlock’s fingers.

“Fresh batteries,” he said.

Sherlock snatched the bear down to hold against his chest, manoeuvring the little toy staff so he didn’t poke himself in the face with it. He buried his nose in the Yeoman’s Cap and the soft fake fur below it and inhaled deeply.

“Rosie,” he seemed to breathe. Then he hunched around the bear and wouldn’t speak.

John stared and said nothing. He raised his shaking hand but didn’t touch Sherlock with it. He dropped it again.

_Don’t leave me._

Then a nurse hurried in with a stand, a bag of saline. “Excuse me a moment,” she said.

_He’s dehydrated. Refusing to drink probably. Gets stubborn on a case._

“Sherlock.”

“G’way.”

John turned and marched out of the room, Giles at his heels.

“Where’s Mycroft?” John asked.

“Back where we started, but four rooms along. Leandra and I visited him earlier, but…”

John strode away without listening or waiting for him.

*

John stood at the end of Mycroft’s bed, arms folded, watching him. Mycroft seemed asleep, but he was beginning to rouse.

Mycroft blinked blearily at him. “What happened to Mummy?”

John didn’t reply.

“She was just here.”

“She’s visiting Sherlock.”

Mycroft’s brow drew into a puzzled frown. He tried to sit up, but he bent the wrong knee and found no purchase. He glared at the place his foot used to be. Set his jaw and used his arms instead.

“You seem to be recovering well,” said John, but his tone was flat. Not terribly interested.

“Am I? I suppose so. Except for the constant pain.” He wince-smiled. “In the foot I don’t have.”

“I’m told you gave Sherlock a case.”

“A case? Oh. Yes. Culverton Smith. I’m…” Mycroft frowned again, and his hand went to his forearm under the long sleeves of his pyjama shirt.  “My arm hurts.” He gave John another confused frown. “Someone was just here.” He shuddered. “They said. Something. Something…” He shook his head. “Terrible.”

“Nobody was here when I arrived. Maybe you were dreaming.”

“Perhaps.” Mycroft pressed his hand over his forearm again.

They stood there in silence for a while longer.

“So he’s here on a case, then. Sherlock.”

“Sherlock’s here?”

“Yeah. On this case of yours.”

“Yes. I hope so. He needs. He needs.” Mycroft shuddered. Pressed his hand to his arm. “Something’s not right.” Then he looked up at John as though waking up at last. “I’m. Sorry. About Mary.”

“Yeah.”

John was silent for a while.

“It’s your fault,” he finally said.

“Yes. I thought you would see it that way.”

“If I could,” said John, mildly, because it’s just how it was, “I’d have her back. Instead of you.”

Mycroft only nodded, as though that were reasonable. He scratched at his arm through his sleeve.

“So what’s the case? Why is he here?”

Mycroft shook his head, becoming distracted again. “I don’t have proof yet. But I suspect. It seems to me that…” He pulled up his sleeve to see his forearms covered in bloody tissues. “What is this?”

“I don’t know, Mycroft.”

“Someone was here. I can’t… what time is it?”

“About 11.”

Mycroft blinked at the brightness through the window. “In the morning? What happened to the last hour?”

“What the hell is going on, Mycroft?”

“Culverton Smith may be a killer. First his uncle. For the money. Perhaps his daughter too. Maybe she found out.”

“Culverton Smith the philanthropist? Who donated a wing to this hospital?”

“Yes.” Mycroft was peeling the tissues back. When they stuck to his skin he reached for a glass of water to dampen them.

“What’s the evidence for that?”

“That was for Sherlock to learn. He needs a case. He needs…”

Mycroft froze. And then he began to shake. He was staring at his forearm, cleaned of tissues now, but scored with red lines.

His eyes were round and horrifying full of terrified tears when he looked at John.

“Where’s Sherlock? Is he at home? Scotland Yard? _Where_?”

“He’s here, in the hospital,” said John, unfolding his arms, becoming terribly alert.

“ _Where_ in the hospital? “

“He’s in the Culverton Smith wing.”

“ _In a ward_?”

“He’s having a breakdown, Mycroft.” John bit his inner lip. Hard.

“Oh god. Oh god no. Oh my god.”

Mycroft reached out to John with his reddened arm. John caught at his hand.

Scratched into Mycroft’s arm, scored into it with Mycroft’s sharp fingernails – which John could see now were grimy with dried blood under the nail – were the words:

_CS kill Sherlock_

“What the fuck?”

“I thought he’d threatened _me_ , but I couldn’t remember. For god’s sake, you stupid man, don’t stand there, get back to him. Go. Run. John. _Run_.”

Mycroft swung out the bed, fell to the floor as he reached for the wheelchair parked just out of reach, but John didn’t stay to help.

John had already turned. Was already running, and running, and running.

*

Sherlock lay in the bed, staring at the bear in his Yeoman Guard outfit. Beefeater. Silly name.

Bart smelled of Rosie and he’d almost cried when John gave it to him. Better to have sent John from the room, though. Culverton Smith was bound to have received the text message Sherlock had sent him early this morning. Smith would likely be here soon.

 _I know what you did_ , he’d texted. _But I can’t prove it_.

The drip was uncomfortable where it was taped in the crook of his arm. It was difficult to move. Made him feel vulnerable and awkward.

He wished he hadn’t sent John away again. That was a bad habit. But there was nowhere here for John to hide. At least he had the bear. A quick test showed the recording device inside it still worked, the microphone in the staff still operated perfectly well. Because it was true. He couldn’t prove it. A confession it would have to be.

Sherlock thought he was hallucinating when a panel in the wall of the room slid open, and a small and smiling man stepped inside.

“Hello Mr Holmes.”

Sherlock blinked. Looked to the closed door of his private room.

“Oh, we’ll be alone for a while now. The staff know you’re a special patient. I arranged for your transfer to this room myself, you know. Nothing but the best for London's resident superhero detective. You deserve the best. We have ten minutes before they’re due on a round here again, and by then. Well.” He smiled and spread his hands. Then, grinning with impish delight, he gestured towards the wall. “Do you like my little trick? I made some adjustments to the blueprints, you know, all those years ago when they were building this wing. I was inspired by the work of HH Holmes. No relation, I suppose? Pity. His murder house was a work of genius, don’t you think?”

Sherlock was breathing hard. “Rather elaborate, I thought.”

“Well, there was that. I kept it simple. A single secret passage, and a secret door to a single room. I’ve sent all my favourites here.”

“Your favourites?”

“Well, not my uncle. He was my first, and I managed to slip him a tropical infection rather easily. It took him away in days, but I couldn’t help myself at the time. I told him on his last day that I was the one who _done him in_. The look on his face was priceless.”

Culverton Smith smiled cheerfully. “And once you’ve done it once, well. It got a bit addictive, I have to say. It’s so much easier now I have the run of the hospital. I like to visit them first. Tell them what I’ve planned, then, a little midazolam, and they don’t remember a thing.”

Sherlock’s breathing quickened. “You’re a serial killer.”

Smith ducked his head, modestly. “I aspire in my modest way to be the most prolific, though recognition will have to wait until after I’m dead.”

“How many?”

“You mean apart from my uncle and my daughter? I was sorry about Faith. I was fond of her, of course, but she discovered my little hobby and threatened to tattle. Hers is one of my favourite faces – when I told her I was going to kill her, then dosed her up so she wouldn’t remember. I liked her face so much I told her three or four times before I actually did the deed.”

“How many?” Sherlock asked again. He was shaking now. Fear or rage, he couldn’t tell.

“Fourteen so far. My second favourite face is your brother’s. Not the one when I said I would kill him. He seemed rather stoic, which is a bit dull. But when I told him this morning I was going to kill _you_ , as punishment for the pair of you sticking your noses into my business. Oh. That was _wonderful_. He _cried_. He _begged_ for you. Does a soul good to know brothers can still care for each other in this troubled world.”

Sherlock swallowed.

“You haven’t dosed me,” he said.

“Well, of course not,” said Smith. “I’m going to kill you now.” Smith waited patiently, then frowned. “Yours, I have to say, is a very disappointing face.”

“You can’t. You won’t. You’ll be caught.”

“I can. I will. And I shan’t. And you can’t stop me.”

Sherlock tried to rise from the bed. He sank back, exhausted, instead.

“Feeling tired? That’s a drop of something extra in your saline drip. I popped by the nurse’s station earlier, when they were preparing it for you. Not midazolam. Just good old fashioned sedative, but rather a lot of it. You’ve probably been wondering why you’re so sluggish. An overdose made just for you. But let’s see if we can help that along.”

And Culverton Smith held his hand over Sherlock’s nose and mouth and pinched before Sherlock could even take a breath.

“There we go,” said Smith, “That’s the face I like to see. Sheer terror. You don’t want to die, but you know you’re going to anyway.”

Smith smiled benignly.

Sherlock clutched at Smith’s hand with both of his but couldn’t make it budge. He felt so weak.

_No. No. No. I want to live. I promised John. Rosie. I want to **live**._

And in the next moment Culverton Smith vanished, whipped away as though by the hand of God, and Sherlock heaved for breath as tears streamed down his cheeks.

He struggled to rise, to escape from Smith and from this unseen new threat.

He fell to the floor with a crash. The needle from the saline drip tore loose from where it had been taped against his arm, leaking sedative poisoned saline onto the floor.

He heard a ferocious snarl. Grunting.  A steady, meaty thud, thud and someone else shouted, “John! Stop!”

Then Mycroft’s voice shouted in desperate despair: “Sherlock!”

And the next moment, a man had thrown himself at Sherlock, gathering him fiercely, ungently, into his arms…

(John, his John, too thin, too desperate, breathing ragged and wet, but his John, John, John, John)

… “Sherlock!”

“John.” A harsh croak.

John was almost straddling him, holding ferociously tight, until John shifted to sit on the floor, pulling Sherlock into his lap. Still holding so tight, so tight. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John too, clinging just as hard.

John’s fingers were hard in his hair, an arm like iron across his back. “You all right? Sherlock? Sherlock?!”

Across the room, Smith’s voice, laughing. “The saline is full of sedative. He’ll be slipping away soon. Overdosed. I still win.”

John’s anguished cry as he pulled away was appalling; almost as appalling as Mycroft’s rising in near hysteria from the doorway.

“I’m okay,” Sherlock said, reaching for John again. “I took the needle out. Soon as the nurse was gone. Not much of a dose; just a little dopey. I’m fine. I’m fine.” He tried to show his arm, the trail of the saline drip that had soaked his shirt, his pyjamas, where it had dripped into the mattress of the bed that had grown soggy under his ribs with what should have been the method of his murder.

John took Sherlock’s face in his hands, grip tight, looking for the dilation of his pupils.

“He didn’t kill me,” said Sherlock firmly, though his voice shook. "I wouldn't allow it. I promised."

John, shockingly, sobbed. Once. Twice. Fell, sobbing, clutching, onto Sherlock. Pulled Sherlock into his lap again and held so strongly that later there would be bruises.

Sherlock didn’t care. He didn’t notice. He was clinging to John, too.

Sobbing. Sobbing.

They clutched to each other and did not cope. Together.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how Mycroft reached the hospital room to see how his brother nearly died. This is what happened straight after. These are the promises kept and made. This is a family.

“For god’s sake, you stupid man, don’t stand there, get back to him. Go. Run. John. _Run.”_

John Watson ran, leaving Mycroft struggling where he had fallen from the bed, trying to drag himself to that damnable wheelchair.

_Five seconds. Run you idiot. Run. How dare you leave my brother alone?_

Twice Mycroft forgot that he had no left foot and tried to push into the floor to rise, once he had his hands on the chair, and squeal-grunted in pain as the healing stump slid across the floor. Nurses would be here soon.

Ten seconds. _You had best be there, Watson, or I won’t be responsible. I will tear you limb from limb when I’m done with Smith._

They would try to put him back to bed and he would damn well fucking fight them if they tried.

_Fifteen seconds. I will not do this again. I will not lose Euros again. **Sherlock.** I will not lose **Sherlock.**_

He would strike anyone who did _anything_ but put him in that fucking chair and take him to Sherlock. He would have them sacked or sent to the Shetland Fucking Islands, he would…

“Sherlock sent me a text… hey, Mycroft! Shit, no, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Mycroft registered Greg Lestrade’s voice but kept battling to get into that goddamned wheelchair. He had hold of it now, and had got onto his knees at last, and it hurt like the devil but that was nothing to the panic of his racing heart, his brain giving him a dozen scenarios, each one bursting with a dozen more, tributaries of intolerable futures, and he was so gone to the terror that he almost fought when strong arms circled his chest and hefted him into the chair at last.

“Mycroft, what…”

“Culverton Smith wing, _now. Take me. **RUN**_.”

Mycroft Holmes would bless Greg Lestrade later, and shower praise and gifts on him _later_ , for how, as Mycroft disengaged the brakes, the DI simply seized the back of the wheelchair and pushed as he ran, full tilt, through the hospital. When it seemed that Mycroft might become unseated as they took a corner, Lestrade reached over the back of the chair to haul Mycroft back into the seat with a fistful of Mycroft’s pyjamas. When someone yelled at them to stop, Lestrade managed to grab his badge with one hand, yell back “Police emergency!” and kept on running. He tossed the badge into Mycroft’s lap and Mycroft held it up like it would magically clear the path, which it somehow did, as he shouted directions to the DI.

Clear passage was granted either due to the badge or to the look of a man who would kill anyone who got in his way, but Mycroft didn’t know that that was what he looked like.

Lestrade, panting, slewed the chair to a stop outside a hospital room with its door flung open and nurses converging on the spot, along with Mr and Mrs Holmes. The security staff who had been running in their wake halted too, trying to understand what was going on.

Mycroft leaned forward in his panicked haste, almost tipping himself out of the chair as he reached helplessly towards what he could see.

Sherlock, heaving for breath on the floor on the other side of the bed, too thin, face shadowed in pain and self-neglect, and flushed red, wet with tears.

The line of a saline drip leaking its contents onto the floor, tape still adhering to the needle.

John Watson standing over Culverton Smith, his expression more murderous than even Mycroft’s own had been, roaring as he drew back a foot and kicked Smith in the ribs as Smith dragged himself away. Watson kicked again, grunting, unreasoning with desperate rage.

“John!” yelled Lestrade, throwing himself into the doorway to stop the security people from piling on top of John. The DI lurched towards the doctor as he was about to land a third kick on Smith who was, like a madman, laughing. “John! Stop!”

“Sherlock!” Mycroft’s voice cracked.

And just like that, John turned and ran, stumbling the few steps to Sherlock, not just falling but throwing himself at Sherlock, throwing his arms around him, “ _Sherlock_!” and clutching at him, breath ragged, eyes full of terror.

“John…” Mycroft heard Sherlock’s dry throat, and wanted only to find the man who’d done that to his little brother and wring his neck until he was as red-faced, until he struggled for breath, until he stopped breathing at all…

John had pulled Sherlock into his lap, holding tight, trying to find out if he was fatally harmed.

Smith, laughing, said. “The saline is full of sedative. He’ll be slipping away soon. Overdosed. I still win.”

The claim drew an awful sound from Mycroft, and he nearly fell from the chair again, trying to reach that vicious little snake, determined to strangle. Gouge out his eyes. Whatever it took. Greg Lestrade was already there, dragging Smith to his feet by the scruff of his neck.

“You’re under fucking arrest,” he snarled, but he looked over his shoulder at the sound of Sherlock’s voice.

“I’m okay,” Sherlock was saying hoarsely. “I took the needle out. Soon as the nurse was gone. A little dopey. I’m fine. I’m fine. He didn’t kill me.”

John, sobbing, clutched Sherlock close and Sherlock, too, held tight and, shockingly, he too was wrenched with sobs.

Mycroft had no idea he sounded just like them. All he knew was that his mother was at his side, bent to wrap her arms around him, and he let her hold him and rock him. His father was standing next to him, holding Mycroft’s hand, stroking his hair. “He’s all right, son. Sherlock’s all right. It’s all right. Hush, now, sssh, my darling boy.”

Lestrade had cuffed Smith, who was still laughing and boasting of his many and rather more successful murders until this point, babbling like an overflowing sewage pipe, full of ripe and foul vanity for his black achievements. The midazolam and the telling and the looks on their funny little faces.

_He filled me with midazolam and told me what he meant to do. To me. To Sherlock._

Mycroft looked at the message he had scratched into his arm before the knowledge faded.

_I will burn that man alive. I will gut him and leave him in the wilds of Eastern Europe to be eaten by wolves. I will…_

Naturally, Sherlock – the drama queen, ignoring all the chaos – waved his hands and began demanding the foolish toy bear on his bedside cabinet. John, just as naturally going along with whatever lunatic nonsense Sherlock was carrying on with, snatched up the bear and threw it across the room to Lestrade – well, obviously, he wasn’t going to leave Sherlock’s side. Naturally.

_Good man._

“Recording,” Sherlock rasped, “He confessed to fourteen murders. His uncle. His daughter. More.”

“Wouldn’t be admissible,” Lestrade said ruefully, tucking the bear under one arm. Donovan and her team, who had arrived minutes after Lestrade in response to the text Sherlock had sent earlier, were holding Smith and staring at him in gobsmacked horror as he talked and talked.

“Never to mind,” said Donovan grimly, “He's confessing so hard to it all right this minute, Polash here is having trouble getting it all down in his notebook.”

The police detective named Polash grunted, scribbling.

“Don’t worry,” said Culverton Smith grandly, “There’s so much more detail. I’ll make sure you get it all. I was caught before my time, but I’ll still be famous.”

Leandra had to catch Giles by the arm before her husband could reach Smith to punch him while in police custody. Donovan tugged Smith, none too gently, from the room before any of these angry, suffering people could give the nasty little toad the beating to within an inch of his life he so thoroughly deserved.

The next few minutes were organised chaos. Nurses helped lift Sherlock into his bed, while he weakly cursed them and told them he had a doctor, he was fine. He gave up arguing when his head hit the pillow and he sagged, exhausted, onto the bed.

John was not fine, but he was not the image of devastation he’d been a short while ago. He stood by the bed, holding Sherlock’s hand except when the doctor who had rushed to them needed to test all of Sherlock’s vital signs.

Someone tried to make Mycroft leave. They only tried the once. Leandra, Giles and Greg ranged around his wheelchair, and not one of the four of them took their eyes off Sherlock and John.

Finally, the doctor pronounced that Sherlock was not in danger, but would have to stay a while longer for observation, as well as his interrupted treatment for dehydration and exhaustion.

Sherlock started to argue. John said, “Don’t.” He didn’t.

Finally, the rest of his family were able to approach them. Greg wheeled Mycroft alongside the bed and retreated to a corner, out of the way.

Giles stood at the end of the bed and kept patting the tops of Sherlock's feet through the blankets. John moved reluctantly away so Leandra could kiss her boy’s cheek and forehead and messy hair.

“Sherlock, darling. You must stop frightening us all like this.”

Sherlock, eyes closed, nodded. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

Leandra took his face in her hands. “Look at me William Sherlock Scott Holmes!”

Sherlock looked at his mother. At her pale face and red rimmed eyes and all the love in them. All the fear.

“We’ve all lost too much, do you hear me? I have nearly lost all my children today. “

“M sorry,” he slurred. “I want. To be. Be. Good enough. To.” His eyes cut to John; to the bear still tucked under Greg’s arm. “I have to do better. I should have saved Mary. I can't fail again.”

“Oh, you silly boy.” Leandra’s face was streaked with mascara-black tears.

“It was my responsibility,” said Mycroft wearily.

“ _Stop it_!”

Giles was quivering with emotion. So much of it. All of it. Fear and grief and rage and relief and desperate, desperate love. WHen he spoke, his gentle voice was ragged and rough with it all.

“Stop this _at once_. Stop destroying yourselves for what you couldn’t prevent. It wasn’t your fault. _Any of you._ You are clever, but you are not _gods_. The world is not ours to control. Losing Mary was a terrible thing. How we lost her was more terrible still. But you can’t bargain your way out of the pain by punishing yourselves for things you can’t change. You want to know how we survived losing Euros, Sherlock? We _endured._ That is all we did. We _lived through it_. We felt all of our pain, and we helped each other. A terrible, terrible accident robbed us of our little girl, so we _loved each_ _other_. We loved you, Mycroft, as hard as we could. When you were born, Sherlock, we found joy in our little baby boy. _Stop killing yourselves_. Your deaths…” Giles stumbled. “Your deaths, as you rightly said Sherlock, will happen to other people. To your mother and me. To John. To your little girl. To your friends. The people who love you.”

Giles stared at them a moment before he dropped his gaze. “Well. That's what your foolish old man thinks, anyway.”

In the hush following, John squeezed Sherlock's hand and rose. He went to Giles at the foot of the bed and reached up to encircle Mr Holmes in his arms. He hugged Giles tightly, wordlessly, for such a long time, and Giles wrapped his arms around John too, and rubbed his back. 

Mycroft thought his father’s words were very fine indeed, for Sherlock and for John. For Mummy too. And perhaps Mary’s death wasn’t really his fault: Dr Watson’s expressive and too readable face when he looked at Mycroft was suggestive of both forgiveness and apology. Perhaps Sherlock’s most recent near miss with Culverton ( _I still want to kill him_ ) Smith was not his own failing.

_But Euros’s death was due to my neglect. Sometimes we must accept the responsibilities that truly belong to us._

“Mikey? Mycroft?”

And truly, his father was a foolish old man, but he was kind.

“I’ve overtaxed my strength,” Mycroft said, allowing the pain and exhaustion that was crashing down on him to show. “Return me to my room?”

*

Mycroft's mother kissed him, but he told her to stay with Sherlock. Greg Lestrade had slipped away, murmuring to John that he'd worry about statements later, but he had removed the memory card from the bear, on which Smith’s confession had been recorded, and left Bart the Beefeater for John to return to Rosie.

Giles took Mycroft back to his room and stayed while the medical staff fussed around him, to Mycroft's weary aggravation. He sat and held his son’s hand as Mycroft closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep, until he actually fell asleep.

Giles Holmes held his eldest son’s hand and kissed his brow, and wished he knew how to relieve him of a burden he had tried to lift since Mycroft was seven years old.

In his own room, Sherlock drifted in and out of sleep.

John’s phone pinged. He released Sherlock’s hand long enough to open the message, and he smiled. John showed the picture of Rosie that Harry had sent first to Leandra, then to Sherlock. Their little girl was gnawing on the octopus, dressed in a sunny yellow dress, her blue eyes scrunched as she cackle-giggled at her auntie's fingers wriggling on her belly.

Sherlock’s eyes watered again, and would have been embarrassed about all these sentimental tears, but then Mummy tucked Rosie’s little bear next to his cheek – the somewhat dangerous toy weapon removed so he wouldn’t lose an eye.

During his sojourn in the nursery, Bart had absorbed the scents of baby powder and a little of Mary’s Clair de Lune and even a frisson of John’s aftershave, and the homeness of it sent Sherlock finally to sleep, with his mother singing to him on one side, John holding his hand on the other.

*

Leandra and Giles stayed as long as visiting hours would allow, but backed up John’s claim to be Sherlock’s partner so that he could stay.

John fell asleep in a chair beside Sherlock’s bed, still holding his hand. Harry sent photos periodically throughout the night, whenever Rosie woke up but also several of her asleep in her cot by John's bed.

_See. She’s fine. We’re fine._

In the morning, Sherlock was declared fit to leave, especially as his partner was a doctor and could continue to monitor his health at home.

After Giles and Leandra went in to promise their imminent return, Sherlock and John visited Mycroft. Mycroft affected grumpiness. Sherlock didn’t care. He took Mycroft’s hand and pulled it out straight so he could inspect the scratches John had told him about.

_CS kills Sherlock.  
_

Scratched into Mycroft's pale skin with the edges of his nails, manicure bitten jagged so that they would leave a bloody mark.

Mycroft glared at Sherlock.

“Make sure you see to those,” said Sherlock at last. “You don’t want to scar.”

“No.”

“The effort is appreciated.”

Mycroft cleared his throat. “Well. To lose one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.” 

Sherlock patted Mycroft's hand before releasing it. “You still do a flawless Lady Bracknell.”

“I’m glad you thought so.”

“Truly. It was a very fine performance.”

Mycroft, not knowing what to say to sincerity that was saying so many other things, including Thank You, only said. “Go home. Give my regards to the Little Watson.”

John's face was full again of apology and forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t. Fair. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.” He looked at the place where Mycroft’s lower leg used to be. “Don’t be stubborn about telling your doctors if the phantom pains continue. That’s your nerve endings not being able to tell the signals aren't going anywhere. There are drugs for that.”

“I’m aware.”

“Right. So. Let them treat it. Don’t. Don’t do without. Because you think you deserve the pain. You don’t.”

“Don’t be idiotic.”

“All right. I won’t. You either.”

It was as Giles and Leandra were driving them back to John and Mary’s apartment that John said, very quietly, in the back seat: “You said you wouldn’t do dangerous things without telling me anymore.”

“I told you,” said Sherlock.

“I think I’d have noticed.”

“I gave a note to Harry. Didn’t she give it to you?”

John frowned. He fished into his pocket and drew out the folded piece of paper he’d all but forgotten was there.

_I have a case at the hospital. Whatever you hear, I am not ill. I am not having a breakdown. I am not leaving you or Rosie. I promise. Trust me._

John folded the note and put it back in his pocket.

“All right?” said Sherlock.

“Yeah. Well. No. But yeah.”

“It’s fortunate I speak Watson. Anyone else would think you were babbling.”

John managed a wan smile and rubbed his cheek against Sherlock’s shoulder. “Don’t risk yourself like that again, though. Not without me there to. To have your back. I couldn’t… I can’t do this without you.”

“Do what?”

“Survive. Endure. Live and raise Rosie. She needs her parents. Her papa as well as her dad. And I need you. I love you. I love you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock entwined his fingers with John’s. Lifted John’s hand to kiss his fingers, then rested their joined hands on his thigh, next to Bart the bear. “I love you too. I’ll be here. I promise.”

“Good.” They kissed then, a quiet promise made in the back seat of the Holmes’s car.

Leandra pulled up at John and Mary’s flat. Leandra and Giles, John and Sherlock, alighted onto the street.

And then John and Sherlock, holding hands, led the way inside to see Harry and their Rosie.

*


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock and Rosie, and their extended family. It's okay to not be okay. But it's okay for things to get better, too.

Their Rosie was an unhappy Watson, restless and tearful and ill tempered, not wanting to be held and not wanting to be left alone, wanting a bottle and not wanting it, yelling for toys and then throwing them away, reaching for her dummy then spitting it out and wailing.

“Hi,” the beleaguered Harry greeted John and Sherlock as they came through the door, squirming Rosie in her arms. “I know it doesn’t look it, but everything is under control.”

Sherlock and John both beelined for their baby while Giles and Leandra took themselves to the sitting room. Harry very happily handed Rosie over into Sherlock’s long reach, and in moments Rosie was having a quiet little cry in Papa’s arms while he rocked her and whispered, “Ssshh, ssshh, ssshhh, little Watson.  That’s enough. No wonder your father gives me such looks when I’m having a strop all over the place, hmm? What a commotion.”

John had finished checking her temperature with a hand to her forehead while running the checklist with Harry about how Rosie had slept, what she’d eaten, when she’d been changed. The answers had been not well, not much and ten minutes ago.

“She took the bottle all right? We used one from time to time before, but she’s still getting used to it. Did you make the formula with the instructions I left?”

“To the letter, Johnnie, just like every other time.”

“She likes to be held when she’s fed. You didn’t leave her in the cot?”

“No I did not leave her in the cot.” Harry drew a breath on her irritation and blew it out. She’d had a series of texts from John about what had happened at the hospital. The bare bones, anyway. She’d called Molly later, who’d got the story from Greg. If John was being a twitchy overprotective dad who assumed his sister was an incompetent mother substitute, well, Johnnie had had a shit of a day and night.

“I guess some nights she just doesn’t need her auntie. She needs her dads.”

John, in the process of making a fresh bottle of formula, nodded, returned to Sherlock and Rosie and, instead of trying to give her the bottle straight away, chucked her under the chin with his finger.

‘How’s my little girl, hmm? Making a big fuss.” He traced his finger down her chin and throat to her chest and tapped it there. Her big blue eyes tried to follow the path.

“Daddy is used to big fusses,” said Sherlock to Rosie, still rocking her slightly. “Papa is just one big fuss all the time.”

“He is,” John conceded, taking Rosie’s hand and lifting it for a kiss. “But Daddy loves him. And Daddy loves you. And Mummy loves you too. Hmm? A kiss from Mummy.” He kissed her hand again, and then her head. She’d calmed down by now, and her free hand waved and took hold of his ear. “Yes she does. And Papa loves you.”

“Papa does,” agreed Sherlock. He kissed the hand that held John’s ear, and she hit him in the nose with it. He huffed a little laugh.

“And Auntie Harry loves you and Mr and Mrs Holmes love you. Mrs Hudson loves you. Molly and Greg love you. Uncle Mycroft loves you too, even when he’s a grumpy-bum.”

“And he’s always a grumpy-bum,” said Sherlock mock-sternly.

Giles and Leandra watched their son from the sitting room. They exchanged a look. Giles nodded, as though he’d just come to a conclusion on a topic they’d earlier discussed. They held hands and smiled between themselves.

Rosie wriggled a bit and reached for the bottle John held. He presented it to her and she latched on, held between her fathers, rocked in Papa’s arms.

John looked over his shoulder at Harry. “Sorry. For. Thanks for staying last night. She just. She misses Mary.”

“Of course she does,” said Harry. “I miss her too.”

John sniffed. Sniffed again, brow furrowing. “What the…?”

“Oh, fuck.” Harry ran to the kitchen, jabbed at the oven controls and with a lot more swearing and hopping about, extracted a tray of bread rolls from the second shelf and half dropped it on top of the cooker. The tops of the rolls had begun to blacken. With more cursing, Harry picked one up, tossing it from hand to hand until she could throw it on the benchtop.  She sighed.

“Well, that’s a pile of shite. It’s okay. We’ve got proper bread made by proper bakers somewhere.”

“Looks edible,” said John dubiously, “If we cut the tops off.”

“Are you brave or are you stupid?” Harry asked, and then, “Don’t answer that, because whatever you say, it’ll be wrong.”

Sherlock laughed without taking his eyes off Rosie’s face.

Leandra and Giles had joined Harry in the kitchen, opening the window and fanning the smoke out with a tea towel. Leandra poked at the burnt bun and broke it in half, revealing the centre of it wasn’t quite cooked yet.

“I could teach you woodturning,” suggested Giles.

“Less chance of me burning the house down,” Harry agreed, “My days of arson are meant to be behind me.”

“But so many days of adventures in baking are ahead!” said Leandra brightly.

“I managed to make lunch, anyway,” said Harry, resigned to her fate as a failed bread maker. “We can wait till the munchkin is settled though, yeah? Here, plant your arses, I’ll get coffee on. Yeah, I know. Tea for you, Giles. Skim milk, one sugar for you Lea. Sherlock, you want tea or coffee? Or maybe I should get you a Berocca, you still look a bit shady.  Fuck, you’ve got a way with that kid. She asleep?”

Rosie had dozed off in Sherlock’s arms, still nursing from the bottle. John pulled it away. Rosie made an aggrieved sound but settled again.

John looked at Rosie and then towards his bedroom, where he’d moved her cot. Sherlock looked at the bedroom and then down at Rosie. His arms tightened slightly around her.

“She’s comfortable where she is,” John said.

“You can eat one-handed. I made spag bol. Not spag bol. No spag.  So we’ve got macaroni bol. ” She arched an eyebrow at John. “What? I _can_ make more than toast and jam, you know. I’m not an entirely rubbish sister.”

She found herself suddenly engulfed in a close embrace. “You’re a good sister,” John said gruffly as he squished her. “You always have been.”

Harry clutched onto her brother and didn’t know what to say. She thought she was probably going to cry. She hated crying, especially where anyone could see. Then she thought, fuck it, and smooshed her face into his shoulder and sniffled. He patted her back. She smooshed harder, and then she laughed, pulling back with wet eyes.

“I snotted all over your jumper.”

“That’s okay. Rosie does it all the time. Sherlock too, once.”

“I did not.”

“The Banyon case?”

“Ah. Yes. So I did. But that was the result of a faceful of pecan pollen.”

“Still snot.”

Leandra handed Harry tissues, then gathered her up in an impromptu hug as well.

They gathered around the kitchen table, Sherlock with sleeping Rosie propped in his left arm, and they ate. They didn’t talk about Smith or what had happened at the hospital. They didn’t talk about the state Sherlock had been in when Harry had last seen him. They talked about Giles teaching Harry to do woodturning, Harry claiming she could then level up to Woodworker Lesbian, which was still several rungs down from Survivalist Lesbian, but a hell of a lot better than IT Lesbian, which she’d been stuck on for a few years.

“Oh I don’t know,” said Leandra, “You’ve been extremely helpful to us at IT Lesbian level for a few months now. John, your sister has set up the whole house with WiFi, even out into the shed, and I can control the sound system from my iPad.”

“She changes the music from The Beatles to Ed Sheeran when I’m supposed to come in for tea,” laughed Giles.

“You’ve been busy,” Sherlock observed with a glance, before taking another bite of dinner and returning his gaze to the sleeping baby. John ate one-handed too, his other hand resting on Sherlock’s knee.

“Funny how time frees up when you’re sober all the time. I have to do something with it or I’ll hit the cooking sherry out of sheer boredom.”

“Harry’s been helping us around Musgrave, too,” said Giles.

Sherlock looked up sharply at that.

“Musgrave?” asked John.

“The ancestral home.” Sherlock frowned. “What’s to be done at Musgrave?”

“Oh, cutting back the weeds, seeing how badly the old pile is teetering on its foundations. Your mother and I thought it was finally time to let it go. We’ve a few more months of work to do on it, but then we’ll put it on the market.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock turned his attention back to Rosie.

“The family seat, eh?” John asked. “Do you really want to sell it?”

“It’s well past time,” said Leandra. “The happy memories we had are so long ago – before Euros died. We left a few years after, once Sherlock was a little older. Mycroft fretted so much that his brother would find his way to the well.”

“He was an overbearing, interfering tyrant,” grumbled Sherlock. “He kept getting in the way.”

“He worried about you, all the time,” said Leandra sternly, “He was only a little boy when Euros died, and it ate him up. We thought it best to get everyone away from such unhappiness. Victor had already moved, and you weren’t very happy yourself after that.”

“We didn’t know if we should sell it at the time,” said Giles, “So it’s been sitting there, costing us in taxes and doing precious little else, except as an agistment for the neighbour’s herd of Red Poll. Nice cows, Red Poll. Very calm. Tender, their owner says.”

“He wasn’t talking about their temperaments, Bunny,” said Leandra with an indulgent smile.

“I know, Ducky,” said Giles solemnly, “But they are very sweet.”

Sherlock’s smile was very fond. “My father, the cow fancier.”

“You don’t object to us selling it, do you?” Leandra asked him.

“Why would I?”

“You did used to love running along that river with Victor, playing pirates.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“I bet you were adorable,” said John with a soft smile. “I’ve seen the photographs.”

“Yes. Well. The theory is that it’s an evolutionary tactic for survival, evidenced by the ‘baby schema’ and the code for cuteness. Baby everythings are more or less adorable. Even baby alligators. Even baby Mycroft.”

“And they’re nothing as adorable as Rosie,” prompted Harry.

“Of course not. Little Watson is the apogee of adorable babies. Go on then, sell the old pile. It’s not like I’ve been to see it since we left.”

“We thought, if you’ve no objection, John,” here Leandra touched the back of his wrist with warm fingers, “We’d put some of the proceeds in a trust fund for Rosie. The share that would have been Euros’s, if she’d lived.”

“Mrs Holmes. Mr Holmes. That’s… that’s very generous”

“We think of Rosie as a granddaughter, you know,” said Giles, smiling at his son, then at John. “Even when Mary was still with us. We always knew you were a marriage of three. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No,” said John, “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you,” said Sherlock firmly. “We accept. Right, John?”

“Yes. We do. Thank you.”

“Excellent. Now. Is there pudding, or shall I text Angelo to send something round?”

*

Greg Lestrade phoned in the middle of coffee and the tiramisu that Angelo sent around with one of his waitstaff, proving that his gratitude hadn’t yet waned.

“Just letting you know I’ll be by tomorrow to get a statement about Smith, if you’re both up to it.”

“If _you_ are, you mean,” said Sherlock, “You hurt your back putting Mycroft into that chair.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Greg, “It was hauling that wanker Smith up by the scruff of his neck that did it. Worth it though. The bastard’s still confessing so often and in so much detail, I’m not sure you’ll even have to take the stand.  But you’re both all right?”

“We’re…” Sherlock looked to John, who was watching Leandra and Giles play peekaboo with the now wide awake Rosie. “Better.”

“Good. It’s a long road, but you and John aren’t alone. Your mates are here to help.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. Thank you. Greg.”

“Hey.” Sherlock could practically hear the smile over the phone. “That’s what mates are for, right?”

Half an hour after coffee, Giles and Leandra were heading back to the hospital to sit with Mycroft and offer support through the measurements for his first prosthetic.

“You should visit Mycroft too,” Sherlock said quietly to Harry. “I expect he could use a cigarette.”

Harry laughed low. “That’s the plan, Skinny.”

“Low tar.”

“I know. I’m not stupid. And ah. You know. Glad to see you home. Well, nearly.  Promise me you won’t end up nesting in the corner like a deranged bear again. Though I suppose you’re more on the twink end of the scale. God. Does that make Johnnie the bear? You know what. Don’t tell me.”

“Goodbye, Harry.”

Harry grinned, hugged him, hugged John, pretended to eat Rosie’s fingers to make Rosie squeal with delight, and left with the Holmes seniors.

Finally. Quiet. Calm. Just the four of them at last.

No. Wait. Three. A fresh surge of grief washed through them again, each wondering how long it would be before they’d stop stumbling over memory, before the daily stab of realisation she was gone would ease into accepting it was true.

_A long road indeed._

Dishes were left in the sink for later. Harry had put several loads of washing through for John, folding everything and ironing nothing. They left that for later too. Instead, they got onto the floor with Rosie on her play rug, helping her to grab at toys, hiding a little Pooh Bear behind a pillow for her to cackle when John made him peek out at her, singing her songs.  Sherlock played a game where he only sang when she grabbed his thumb, and then John grabbed the thumb and Sherlock was performing a staccato Baa Baa Black Sheep for the pair of them.

When she babbled happily, Sherlock nodded and agreed with her deductions about Pooh Bear’s recent honey eating habits.  John read to her from _Guess How Much I Love You_ , which Mary had bought for the nursery when Rosie was two months old. “This story is from Mummy,” he said, and he even tried to mimic Mary’s voice a little.

Next was bath time for Rosie. Sherlock put the little tub inside the bathtub and filled it while John kept up a running commentary for Rosie on what they were doing. John brought their girl in, wrapped in a soft towel, along with a photograph of Mary, which he put on the sill above the washbasin.

“See, Mummy’s here for bath time, just like always.”

Sherlock took off his shirt and shoes and clambered into the bathtub, splaying his legs on either side of the baby tub, never mind that it was gangly and awkward. John didn’t say a word, only knelt on the tiles and held Rosie up while Sherlock took the towel away, and into her bath she went.

Rosie was a born water baby. She splashed and gurgled, kicking water all over her fathers with feet and fists. John used the baby soap sparingly on her belly, arms and hands. Sherlock sluiced water over her and played with her feet to make her laugh.

“She’s grown so much since…I saw her last,” he said. _Since the funeral._ He sounded sad.

“Yeah. She changes every day.”

“I’m sorry I missed it. I’m. I’m sorry. I wasn’t here. I’m. John. I’m so sorry.”

John steadied Rosie with one hand, made sure Sherlock was steadying her with two, then leaned across the tub to kiss Sherlock’s temple. “I should have come to you. Mary’s right. We’re rubbish on our own.”

“She always was the smartest of the three of us.”

“She was. Is.” They looked at her picture. Rosie kicked water in their faces and laughed, and neither could help grinning at her.

“I won’t miss another day,” Sherlock promised.

“Course you won’t. You’re her Papa.”

Rosie farted in the water, giving herself a fright and she cried. John, laughing, smoothed her wispy hair back from her forehead with a wet hand. “There, there, you little tooter.” He tickled her chin and then her tummy and she smiled her gummy smile and cheerfully kicked more water into Sherlock’s face.

When the water cooled, Sherlock lifted her up while John wrapped her in the soft towel again. Sherlock took Mary’s picture with them back into the nursery so John could finish drying Rosie and dress her again.

A short time later, a timid knock and a loud _Yoo-hoo_ at the door heralded Mrs Hudson’s arrival. She pulled a heavy four-wheeled tartan shopping trolley behind her. Sherlock peered at Mrs Hudson’s red sports car in the street, calculated where on earth she’d put the trolley and its contents for the drive, then followed her into the flat.

“A little birdie told me you were all home again!” said Mrs Hudson chirpily.

“A chain of little birdies,” said Sherlock. “Harry called Molly. Molly called you. Quite the network you have going there.”

“We’re women, dear, we always have quite the network,” Mrs Hudson told him. “Molly says Harry says you haven’t done the shopping in a while, except for enough formula to survive the apocalypse. I’ve brought casseroles; scones and butter; bread and a few other things…” This she said as she unstacked the contents of the trolley onto the table. “So you have a few more days before you need to worry. There we go…”

She turned and caught Sherlock up in a long hug, then John, then she baby-talked Rosie for a while. “Gran missed her Rosie Rose, yes she did! She did! And she’s been tidying up your silly Sherlock’s rooms before the rats started nesting in all those papers.”

“Mrs Hudson!”

“And don’t you let your Papa put on his shocked face. He knows perfectly well I’ve put things in neat piles for him to reorganise later. He’s such a silly, your Papa. He makes such perfect messes, then gets ever so fussy about where to keep his case notes. What a silly Papa. But look what Gran found, Rosie Rose!”

Mrs Hudson produced Rosie’s little bee, hand washed after being rescued from Sherlock’s misery nest at the end of the sofa. “Bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz!”

Rosie grabbed for her bee with a determined little face, her blue eyes wide and her mouth a little crooked with her concentration as she grabbed the bee and pulled it to her chest.

“Oh, she looks just like her mum!”

Mrs Hudson pressed a knuckle to her lips, her eyes filling. Sherlock put his arms around her and hugged her again.

John took her hand and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for coming. She’s missed her Gran. We’ve missed you.”

“It would be lovely if you could come back to Baker Street,” said Mrs Hudson, dabbing at her eyes. “I know it’s not really set up for baby. Oh. I suppose that means Sherlock will come here?” Her face fell, then brightened, “Though if he moved all those smelly experiments down to 221C it might work. It’s still empty, and I’d rather you had it than any strangers. Well, think about it, anyway.”

Mrs Hudson stayed for dinner and a cuddle with Rosie, then kissed them all goodnight and left.

And so another member of the extended family ensured John and Sherlock were fed. Reminded them that they were not alone in this.

It was early for sleep but John and Sherlock were both ragged with exhaustion, and dozy with two decent meals.

“Go to sleep if you want,” said John as they lay side by side in the bed that still held the scent of Mary’s perfume. “I… don’t much. At the moment.” He glanced at the cot, where Rosie had already settled. “I don’t like her out of my sight for long.”

Sherlock made no comment on that. He settled in, an arm draped across John’s thigh, face snugged against John’s hip. He felt the weight of the absence of Mary on his other side, but when he closed his eyes he could feel John’s warmth, hear Rosie breathing, inhale the scent of Mary on the pillow and it was almost as if she’d just stepped out for a minute.

Deep in sleep, her saw her face. Merry blue eyes, teasing-fond.

_“You can do this.”_

_I… want to. I don’t know if I can. You know what I’m like._

_“It won’t always be easy, but you can do this. You know I know you. You know I’ve never lied to you. Not really. Not where it counts. You can do this.”_

_Is that a promise?_

_“You’re Sherlock Holmes. You can do anything you set your mind to. You defied death to come back to John. This is a walk in the park.”_

_A long, scary walk in the park that never ends. What if she gets lost in there? What if I fail them again?_

_“You won’t. You don’t. You never have. You can do this.”_

_Yes. I can do this._

_“Take care of them for me, sunshine.”_

Sherlock woke up to the sound of Rosie grizzling with discomfort in her cot. John was still sitting up but seemed asleep. Sherlock slipped out of bed and went to their daughter. He lifted her into his arms and she flailed her legs.

“Hush, hush, little Watson. Papa’s got you.”

He turned to take her to the nursery then thought better of it. He sat on the edge of the bed instead. “John.”

John’s eyes flew open and he sat straight up, until he saw them and the hyper alertness faded. “Everything all right?”

“Rosie needs to be changed and fed. I didn’t want you to wake without us here.”

John pushed the blankets aside.

“You do the bottle,” Sherlock said, “I’ll change her.”

Soon after they were feet-up, facing each other on the sofa, John cradling Rosie as she fed. Sherlock watched them.

“Come home,” Sherlock said impulsively. Then he looked at his feet, jaw tight. “Sorry. I keep. Doing this wrong. This _is_ your home.”

John pressed his feet against Sherlock’s where they met in the middle of the sofa. “My home was always wherever you, Mary and Rosie were. Here, Baker Street. They were both home, for all of us.”

“It’s more convenient for Rosie here.”

“Stop talking yourself out of it, you idiot. Rosie and I are coming home. To Baker Street. Once 221C is sorted out.”

The two men smiled.

“I had a dream about Mary,” John said. “Reminding me that shutting myself off never ever makes things better. She called me an idiot. She was very nice about it though. She said, the least you and Sherlock can do is to be idiots together. She said we’re pretty good at being idiots together, and were long before she met us.”

Sherlock huffed a laugh.

“She said. In my dream. Mary said it’s okay for us not to be okay. She said it's. It's okay for us to get better, too. For things to get better than they have been."

"John."

"I know it's only my subconscious mind in a dream. But. But it helps. To dream she said those things."

"Yes. It does.

"Things are what they are. But we’ll endure. Live through it. Survive and thrive. We just have to love each other as hard as we can.”

“Mary has been listening to my father.”

“Your dad’s a smart man.”

“Yes. He’s something of a role model for my taste in men, which is rather predictable of me but,” he shrugged. His eyes twinkled at John’s, in much the same way that Giles sometimes twinkled at his mother. “It seems to be working out.”

Rose contributed a burbling commentary of _bababababababababa_ , having abandoned her bottle in favour of waggling her feet, which Sherlock had dressed in brightly coloured socks.

“I miss her,” said John.

“Yes. I miss her too.”

“We can do this,” said John firmly.

“We are doing this,” said Sherlock. He stepped off the sofa, then while John budged up he wriggled to sit behind him and Rosie. They breathed together for a long while, watching Rosie being captivated by her own kicking feet. Loving each other, and their daughter, as hard as they knew how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more stories to come in this series. :)


End file.
